Deck and Porch Construction in Durham, NC

Durham is bungalow country. Trinity Park and Old West Durham are full of 1910s to 1930s mill houses with original heart pine, wet plaster and rooms that were never sized for a modern bathroom. South Durham toward Southpoint is thirty years newer and built on slab.

That is the ground every deck and porch construction project in Durham starts from. New decks, structural rebuilds and screened porches, permitted through your county inspections office and framed to outlast the boards on top.

What the price covers

• Footings and framing. Concrete footings dug below the frost line and sized to the actual load, pressure treated framing lumber, joist hangers and structural screws rated for exterior use rather than deck screws doing a job they were never rated for.
• Ledger attachment and flashing. Through bolted to the house rim joist, never just nailed, with flashing that sheds water away from the band board instead of trapping it behind the siding.
• Decking, railing and stairs. Composite, pressure treated or hardwood decking with hidden or face fasteners, a code compliant guard system, and stair stringers cut so every rise and run in the flight matches exactly.

Deck and Porch Construction in Durham, in practice

Piedmont clay is the soil under most decks we build in Durham, and it behaves nothing like sand or loam. It expands when it is wet and shrinks when it dries, which can lift or tilt a footing that was poured too shallow or without enough bearing area. Code in Durham County generally calls for footings that reach undisturbed soil below the frost line, and we size the diameter to the actual tributary load of each post rather than pouring one standard tube for every location. On a sloped lot, one corner sometimes sits on a footing twice the depth of the others. Getting this step right is what keeps a deck from developing a slow lean five years after the last board is nailed down.

The ledger board is the single point where a deck attaches to the house, and it fails more often than every other part of the frame combined. We through bolt the ledger to the rim joist of the house in Durham, never relying on nails alone, and we flash it with a metal flashing that tucks under the house wrap or siding and sheds water forward over the ledger rather than behind it. Skip that flashing and every heavy rain in Durham County drives water down the band board and into the floor framing, where it rots quietly until someone notices a soft spot or the deck starts to pull away from the wall. It is a small detail that decides whether the connection lasts thirty years or five.

Questions from Durham homeowners