Picture of the Week

No it's not a deck, but this Bird of Paradise at a job we are working on in Ventura is beautiful!  Hope you think so too.

What's The Point of Flashing a Deck If Some Idiot is Gonna Compromise It?

So here's a deck I looked at in Shell Beach CA; it was doomed to die the day someone cut the flashing to install the overflow. The flashing was cut right down to the deck level, leaving water no choice but to run into the deck rather than away from it and over to the drain. RIP ole buddy. 

This is the kind of hack work that will keep us busy for years!

Standard Practice in Sheet Metal Work: A Reference Book 

Architectural Sheet Metal - 7d Thermal and Moisture Protection ((Brochure - 20 pages))

Residential Sheet Metal Guidelines

Picture(s) of The Week-I Think My Deck is Falling Off the Building

 

FUGLY! (As in F ing Ugly)

This deck is falling off the building! The beams are shoring up a broken/rotted main support beam that was rotting for years. Everything is so rotted, I wouldn't even think of stepping on the decks. H's must maintain, this deck will cost many thousands more to rebuild than it ever would have to repair 10 years ago.

When All Attempts at Sloping a Roof Deck Fails...a Solar Powered Roof Pump Does the Job???

I subscribe to a Home Inspectors Website Forum...
in today's posts was one about roof sloping and ponding water.

This picture of a solar powered battery charger roof pump caught my eye...

I guess if you can't slope the roof, when all else fails, this would at least get the water off the roof.

But maybe you'd be better off hiring a roofer who can properly slope and cricket a low slope roof deck?

Waterproofing Company's Employee Injured in Crane Collapse at Fanueil Hall in Boston

An accident in Boston has left an employee of Chapman Waterproofing injured, after a crane holding scaffolding collapsed yesterday.

Fortunately the man was treated for "non-life threatening injuries" at the local hospital.

Read the whole article by clicking here.

ANOTHER REMINDER THAT JOB SAFETY IS JOB NUMBER ONE! OSHA will be investigating this accident to see what went wrong...

Incompetent Tufflex Installer Costs Homeowner Thousands of Dollars in Damage

In the world of waterproofing a deck for the application of tile, there are a few things one should or should not do...
1.)-Do not Cheap out on the installation costs of your waterproofing.
2.) Do not Install unapproved or unevaluated coatings.
3.) Do check the applicators status and ensure their competency to correctly install waterproofing for tile.
4.) Do call Central Coast Waterproofing at 805-801-2380 for a proper and thorough job...

I was down in Santa Barbara at an expensive home up in the hills last week, having received a call from an owner who found our DeckExpert.com website.

They said to me that they had a guy a couple years ago, a Tufflex applicator, install waterproofing for their new tile deck. Now they are suffering from water intrusion into their garage ...the deck had been partly dismantled to inspect and would I be interested in giving a bid?

I was on my way...here's the pictures of the deck...with their nice tile torn off.
Turns out that the applicator is out of business, what a surprise, but he wanted to "help" and offered a local applicator/contractor that did Tufflex to redo the job. The Tufflex was installed over OSB (tsk tsk) and then metal lath was stapled down and the tufflex laid into the lath. Only the applicator must of been (Pick one or all)

1) Cheap, because he didn't put enough Tufflex down to properly bury the lath entirely. Or
2) Incompetent, because he didn't put enough Tufflex down to properly bury the lath entirely. Or
3) Stupid, because he didn't put enough Tufflex down to properly bury the lath entirely.

Whichever you pick, you'd be correct. Failure to bury the lath caused this huge problem that will cost the owner 8-12k in repair costs, not including the tile work. The water on the deck seeped by the grout of the tile, down to the waterproofing, where it had no place to go...so it sat on the Tufflex and exposed metal lath. While sitting, there was this marvelous little chemical reaction going on between the metal lath and the water...RUST action.

Eventually the water made it's way into the garage ceiling below, exposing finally the sins of it's installer.

Moral of the story, you can buy cheap waterproofing, but you can't buy great waterproofing cheap!

Stamped Deck by Masterseal's Dave DiBaggio is the "Job of The Week"

My friend Dave DiBaggio has a small family owned corporation down in San Clemente...he does deck coatings, floors, stamping, concrete repairs and overlays. Dave is like me, he knows that he needs to be on the job to assure that it goes right and that the personal responsibility is there.

He just sent me these pics of a cool stamp job he just finished on a deck. This is a Dex-O-Tex Barrier Guard job, reinforced and stamped/colored to spec.

Check them out and if your down OC/San Diego way and need a great job on your personal home or business, call Dave DiBaggio at Masterseal at 949-355-5031!

No Need to Hire a Pro, These Pics Prove It!

Ahhh, humor...where would we be without a little humor on a Tuesday morning?

Especially a little black humor. These
pics came to me from Mike DeJong/Don Roberts down at All-Seasons Restoration, forwarded from an email to them...

Picture of the Week-A Reminder That October is Fire Safety Month, and so is every month of the Year!

I don't know what started this fire, but the owners are lucky.
The siding on the house is burned up, there is plastic melted on the deck and the building has probably sustained 10l worth of damages...easily.

Please please be careful!

Why Scuppers Need to Be Flashed on the outside wall

I posted a couple pictures of a job we're doing in Grover Beach earlier this week; there is dry-rot and structural damage, quite a bit and it's all because of (mostly) the scuppers allowing water past them, as seen in this picture.

You can see the rusted plate right below the opening, building paper is visible, but no counter flashing was installed over the scupper, which would allow the lather to put paper behind, then down over the counter-flashing...

This $50.00 to install item, by deleting it, caused $5,000 in damages...

Insist your scuppers get counter-flashed on the outside, it's one of those differences between me and my competitors...I put them in, most of my competitors don't.

For a job done correctly every time, where, when it comes to waterproofing, compromise is not an option , call me, Bill Leys at 805-801-2380

Picture of the Week

So I got a call last week from a client in Grover Beach; she'd had her deck redone by a local company a couple years ago.

She said "there's rust coming through from the chicken wire". I rushed right over...

The patient had signs of serious distress; rusted lath all over the deck. Close examination and an autopsy revealed what looked to be Tufflex or some type of urethane troweled over the lath. Some sloping work was done, we could see the built up materials over an old existing fiberglass system that went over the original urethane surface we found buried down below...

The deck was flat in many areas, attempts at crickets to move water to the scuppers were done poorly, water ponded on the deck just from the heavy fog we get on the coast in corners adjacent to scuppers, and out on the field of the deck.
Clearly who ever did this was guilty of not knowing what they were doing...

Demo'ing the stucco walls, where i could see the flashing was rusting through, we found serious amounts of water damage to the plywood and metal. Removing the plywood in one corner revealed the damage below to the TGI Trusses (Engineered Truss System, uses wood and OSB for strength).

This brought our work to a screeching halt; a general contractor will be needed to fix this problem, then we can come back and waterproof.

This job for us is around 10K, the owner now faces another 10k in wood repairs before we can waterproof her properly...

Lesson, you can cheap out on your job, but your job won't get any cheaper!

Do it right the first time, not the second or third.

Pictures of the Week-What's Wrong With This?

So I looked at a job yesterday here in SLO County; the contractor is taking over a job from another contractor, and the decks and stairs were already flashed and drains installed...
This is what I found...looking at the stairs, can you see what's wrong with the flashing/weep screed?

Yup, the weep on the down leg is not there, the stucco guy didn't install a weep, and just brought the paper and wire to the edge of the flashing. Now I have no way of bringing my waterproofing into the corner and out onto the flashing...this is a big leak possibility unless the stucco is opened and weep installed and terminated properly.

Then I looked at this drain set up...I have no idea what they were thinking of either...

Deck Expert Goes on a Field Trip

Just like in high school, I loved going on "field trips" to see competitors jobs after they are completed. See the job, check what they've done, how they did it, details, and of course, to see if any problems exist or evidence of problems.

So last week on Friday, Deck Expert went off with a buddy to trip down to Rancho Bernardo to the 4S Ranch, where apartment homes were recently built by Saris-Regis Homes...

Rumor has it that it's a job with Westcoat on it, so we're looking for evidence of any failures over wp-40 in particular.

Most of the walkways are well covered with overhangs, protecting them from the heat of the sun, which out here, can easily reach 105 degrees I'm told on many days. There's also private decks and entry decks too so we check them all out, or at least what we can get on... many of these have some sun exposure so maybe we'll find something.

Our field trip revealed some interesting observations and strange details, many of which I personally would never have covered over. We found hot water heater closet doors without any thresholds, that are actually lower than the decks, meaning when it rains, water could run under the doors into the closets. Hope they called that out before waterproofing the closets and decks...

We also found the trim on the doors down onto the decks, which can allow water to wick up into the trim and cause rot, edge details where the material is pulling away or never adhered to begin with. We also saw details like the post bases being covered over, the bolts and bases covered with materials, just barely.

Then as it was looking like there was nothing of significance failing, I spotted a big deck at the leasing center on the second floor, looking out over the pool. Totally exposed to the sun, during the hottest parts of the day.

So into the leasing center we went, up the stairs and out onto the deck. JACKPOT!

So here are the pictures of the cracked deck, multiple cracks everywhere. We found areas where the deck sounded hollow, like it wasn't attached to anything...it moved too, with my weight on the areas...

So is this a Westcoat product job with ALX and WP-40? We're going to find out for sure, we're sending the pictures to Sares-Regis and I'm going to ask them who did it and with

Picture of the Weak (Week)

A few weeks ago I got a call from a client in Cambria; their deck up on the roof had "funny looking lines" and "cracks with rust coming out"

So of course I gotta see this. I drive up and find a urethane coated deck on the roof, ap 11 years old, original owner, never maintained or resealed.

The urethane has burned up, dried out and has split over the plywood seams, which were covered in metal strips first to cover over with the urethane. The metal strips have of course rusted, Cambria is on the ocean after all, and the deck now needs to be redone.

Resealing the urethane could have prevented the early demise of this deck...another lesson for the owners of urethane to maintain or pay...

Picture of the Week-When Stoners do AC Work

When stoners do ac work! yes that is a tire under this ac condensor unit at an HOA in Santa Clarita...

Picture of the Week-What Kind of Quality Does 40 Cents PSF Get You For Resealing Decks?

So I have been doing repair and a lot of deck coating replacement work on these Mer-Kote covered decks down south. A cold call has paid off in quite a bit of work and I am grateful...so when they asked me to bid to reseal all of their decks, less the ones on tap for replacement,I was was psyched. There's a lot of decks and a lot of square footage here so it was a bid of around 100k for me.
As I said, they are a Mer-Kote slip sheet system deck coatings. Someone spent a lot of time sloping these decks to drains in 3-5 locations on many decks (yes they are big! 700 sq feet each +). However, wear and tear from long term tenants who use these decks hard caused many to begin failing because of sun burn, grills burning areas, plants and contiguous building failures.
The remaining decks got cleaned and resealed by a competing bidder, who was actually a painting company. They did the job using Life Paint sealer color matched to the specifiactions of the management company.
I saw some of the decks that got redone...and this is what they looked like.
How long does anyone want to bet they'll last? Next rain?

The job came down to dollars and sense, we bid it to spec, the painter bid it to what he decided to do.
Pressure was them and then paint what's ;eft. A couple areas were so blasted apart we had to re-do them.

Log Cabin Home with Dex-O-Tex On It.

Not really a Picture of the Week, but some interesting pictures never the less...

My buddy Dave DiBaggio of Masterseal is doing this job in Orange County...not a typical house that you think you'd see in the OC, but a real log cabin up in the canyons and mountains above Anaheim.

This is the email I got from Dave describing the job...very cool job, very cool home. Call Dave at Masterseal for your next deck coating job in the OC, Dave will "Do It Best" he's a master and has 20 years experience as an applicator and manufacturer's rep. 949-355-5031 gets you the master direct, tell him I sent ya!

Hi guys,

This is the 3000 sf Fracture Resistant Membrane System installed for use under spaced wood decking and flagstone on the xxxxxxx Residence in Silverado. They are the ones who pressed for the 10 year warranty.

Metal lath + A-81 basecoat, A-81 sloping, 40 mils Barrier Guard with RPII fabric and Resistite protective coating was used. It was flood tested by the freak deluge last week (Williams Canyon is the next one over) and did not leak.

Flashings were stainless steel with SS nails and primed with AF Bondcoat.

Drains were Thunderbird copper balcony deck drains and tile drains with copper nails. The metal lath was held back to avoid contact with the copper and two plies of Barrier Guard and RPII fabric were installed around the drains for extra protection.

Lexel co-polymer sealant was used at all metal joints. The substrate was 3/4 ich - 1 inch exterior plywood (no OSB).

Plan on coming out to see this one in a few weeks. Its a
$2.5 custom log house type construction job that will make the OC magazines when its finished.

Picture of the Week a 62.5 degree difference!

So yesterday in San Luis Obispo, I'm finishing up securing a couple of posts on a deck we just redid, and I'm kneeling in the sun on the deck and put my hand down on the coating...ouch damn that's hot!

I wonder how hot? So I got out my new infrared thermometer...and measured. Hot deck, cool deck in the shade. What a difference...62 degrees cooler!

So even though it wasn't that hot (80's), you can see what your poor deck goes through with the torture tests. Can't wait until summer and I'm down Palm Springs way o see what readings I get out there.