We are pleased to announce that we have been retained to investigate leaks on a new addition on an Avila Beach residence by the owners of the property.
The owners of the property had hired a local contractor, who with a team of subcontractors built a dining room with a deck above to expand the living space and take advantage of the views that they have. The contractor completed the project shortly before last winter’s rains started up and the owners quickly realized that there were leak problems in several areas of the new construction.
We have performed visual inspections as well as rudimentary water testing that has found several areas of concern that will need to be further investigated via destructive testing.
Water testing a window in the search for leaks
If you’re building is leaking reach out to us today for assistance in investigating the cause and devising a solution to repair the problem. The longer you wait the worse the damage can become with water intrusion issues into structural elements.
By now many people have read the story of a deck collapse in a vacation rental in Georgia…9 people were injured, including several senior citizens. Fortunately no one died.
The pictures of the “accident” show a typical deck collapse scene, the rotted wood at the house to deck connection, the furniture and deck spilled all over the ground, rescue crews giving first aid and transporting victims to the hospital.
A typical deck collapse with multiple victims caused likely by a poor connection to the house with rotted wood failing and sending the deck crashing to the ground.
As a professional performing deck inspections I can say that I see this typical scene over and over, particularly on single family homes and it seems, very often that they are on rental properties. After viewing this picture above I tweeted out to Airbnb and VRBO that they could help lead the drive to deck safety by requiring owners to have professional inspections signed off before they can rent the property and let people use the deck. Very often on rental properties there are a number of people visiting having a party on the deck and then they go over to the edge of the railing where the view is to have a picture taken of the group and that’s when the decks framing becomes overloaded and the deck crashes to the ground.
Influential and powerful companies like VRBO and Airbnb have the ability to drive owners to have inspections performed on the deck. Insurance companies can also start requiring inspections of decks before they insure a property.
As a professional inspector whenever I am at a party or someone’s house with a deck on it I will walk underneath the deck and take a look at the connections between the house and the deck, the framing the posts etc., to make sure that I am not going to be the victim if the deck comes down. That may make me sound like a Debbie Downer but I’ve seen the results of too many deck collapses hospitalizations, death, long-term injury. The Berkeley deck collapse should have been a wake-up call Nationwide but we just ended up going back to the usual and typical shrugging and saying not much we can do…
Well there are things we can do, we can require inspections on vacation rentals where it’s likely that large groups of people will gather in the deck. We can stop or severely reduce deck collapses by requiring owners to have their decks inspected yearly. A typical deck inspection might run $250 to $350…
To paraphrase Rage Against the Machine, “It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime What better place than here, what better time than now?” It’s time to start fixing this preventable problem.
SLO & Santa Barbara Realtors-Do you know William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC inspects wood and waterproof decks for buyers (and sellers)? We are the only company that does deck inspections where our duty and interest is only to the client, we do not bid for repairs! Why is this important? Because it’s the law. Contractors performing inspections for real estate transactions may not bid on work found to be needed. “Free” inspections predicated on doing the repair work is included. B&P Code section 7195 imposes certain duties and constraints, including prohibitions on repairing properties on which an inspection was performed in the last 12 months, accepting kickbacks and payments of referral fees to agents. Beyond that, it’s simply not ethical. We work for your client; that’s it. If your client, after getting our inspection, wishes to verify that the repairs to the deck or buildings weather resistant barriers are being installed correctly, they have the option of retaining us to perform quality assurance visits to observe and record a contractors repair procedures, materials used and following the plans and manufacturer’s specifications. Learn more about our services here in our website.
Careful checking if the integrity of the woods found this problem at a post connection.
SB 326 Deck Inspections & Building Envelope / Waterproofing Experts
SB 326 Deck Inspection Specialists * Building Waterproofing Consultants * Construction Defect Investigations By Bill Leys The Deck Expert 