Deck and Porch Construction in Garner, NC

New decks, structural rebuilds and screened porches, permitted through your county inspections office and framed to outlast the boards on top.

In Garner you are usually dealing with brick ranches with better bones than their floor plans suggest, which changes how the work has to be sequenced. Because the housing stock predates the region wide subdivision boom, Garner jobs run into original cast iron waste lines and cloth wrapped wiring more often than newer towns do.

What the price covers

• 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.
• Permits and inspections. We file the permit, schedule the framing inspection before a single deck board goes down, and meet the inspector on site so the structure is verified while it is still visible.
• Finish, hardware and punch walk. Post caps, rail brackets and stain or sealer as the last step, then a walk through where you check every board and connection before we call the job done.

Deck and Porch Construction in Garner, in practice

Piedmont clay is the soil under most decks we build in Garner, 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 Wake 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 Garner, 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 Wake 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 Garner homeowners