04/17/2026
Clients' called me to assess some issues with their deck.Their deck had, in fact, failed. The contractor's team made critical mistakes.They hung a massive 16'×27' deck supported with only four cheap joist hangers using only 1.5" nails which had been only attached to the house's rim joist, which ran parallel to the home's joists. This means not much was keeping it from pulling away completely. It had started pulling away and was on the verge of collapsing. The deck was barely hanging on after the joist hangers nails pulled out. In one way, the nails pulling out was fortunate, because if they had held, the rim joist could have come with the deck compromising the house's structure. A gas line to the grill also runs through the rim joist and would have ruptured. It could have been catastrophic. You see tragedies of decks failing in the news. This was an emergency which had to be fixed immediately. Replacing the entire deck was not in the budget. To make it right, I first used a 20-ton jack to level the deck to the proper height and supported it with posts sitting on Diamond Piers. The four Diamond Piers are rated to support up to 17.5 tons. The deck is attached to the house but is no longer supported by the single rim joist and cheap joist hangers. I added bracing to prevent the deck from racking in any direction. You could land a helicopter on it now. : )