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Porches & Decks

How to Avoid Deck Failure

Deck flashing can make or break the structure of your deck. Here’s how it works: you have your main house structure, your band board, half an inch of sheathing, and then siding. At John Temmel Siding Guy, this is our deck flashing process: we cut and remove the siding at the band board, insert a large L-piece of flashing, install siding, and place the floorboards on top so that when it rains, the water will exit away from the house. This is the end result you want because the water won’t leak into the structure of your home causing rot. When deck flashing is poorly installed, water will go behind the deck and rot the structure of the house, which will result in deck failure.

“I have been telling people for years that you have to flash the deck up to the coat. You have to make sure the water exits away from the structure, otherwise there is going to be a catastrophic deck failure,” says John Temmel on deck flashing. Deck failure as a result of improper deck flashing happens only with siding houses, which is why it’s important to get your deck checked out if you fall in this category!

Photo Credit: aberenyi / photoxpress