Deck Collapse!!!!!!!!

Rickdog99

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum. About six months ago me and my neighbor were taking our siding off the house and replacing it with vinyl siding. When we were taking the siding around the deck and the back of the house, I went upstairs to go onto the deck and it collapsed from the house and I went down with it. I had to have a hip replacement for it and am healing now. The deck was only attached to the siding of the house (the siding was the abitibi kind (Louisana Pacific), which I received a class action settlement as a result of. There was no ledger board and the deck was only attached to the siding in addition to no flashing of any kind, and the house and deck were 11 years old. Have any of you heard of decks being put up to only siding and no ledger board? Is this correct construction standard of 1994 in Georgia or anywhere for that matter back then? Thanks. I have pics if you want to see them, please email me.

Ricky Rosenberg

surf6524

Hey Rick, I hope your doing ok from that fall. In response to your question, no, a deck is supposed to be supported by a ledger that is attached to the box beam of the house, or the wall studs, not the siding itself. It should also be properly flashed for water sheding. Your local building dept coluld help you with any questions you may have. Best of luck to you

Zatol

Are you the original owner of the house?

If I were the builder, I would ask why did the deck last for 12 years and decide to fall while you and your buddy were 'removing siding'....

Is there any way that you could have contributed to the accident?

Or...should you take advantage of the 'sue happy' mentality of the today's culture and take the builder for a few hundred thousand!

A contractor's board is not a good place to discuss suing another contractor... It tends to stand the hair up on the back of our necks.

I sincerely hope that you're well, nontheless.

RobertCDF

I doubt that a builder built that deck unless your house was built without a permit. No inspector would pass that deck. I would not be suprised to find out that the first homeowner opted to NOT have the builder do the deck so he could do it himself and save a few bucks. This is why you should only hire REPUTABLE contractor that know what they are doing.

__________________
Robert Shaw
Colorado Springs Custom Decks
Colorado Custom Decks
Custom Composite Decks

Rickdog99

Maybe a contractor forum was not the best place to post this, but does not hurt to hear the comments on what the builder will throw at me. I am the third owner of the house, and I do know for a fact the builder put this deck up. I do not believe I contributed to its collapse. Since it was only bolted to the siding, removing the siding thus released any stress that it was being held up by and thus collapsed the deck. If it were into any ledger board solidly into the structure of the house, it would not have gone down. I maintained my deck year to year checking for wood rot, etc., but this was a latent defect that you could not notice unless you tore the basement ceiling apart and noticed how it was secured to the house incorrectly. By the way, in my town there was no deck code on file in 1994, and code for decks was established here in 2000, with the ICC as the standard now.

specwood

The installation sounds like it was not done properly, however I am skeptical here as to the exact cause of the collapse.

Let's see, you are saying it was bolted only to the siding, but not the joist box? How long were the bolts? Did you loosen any of the bolts? Was there any rot? You claim you checked for this regularly.

If the installation was faulty, and it can be proven that the faulty installation caused the collapse, you may have a case against a contractor. However, if you fooled with the deck's attachment to the house prior to the collapse, you have some negligence here.

Frankly, it sounds as if you did fool with the attachment. It sounds as if this deck lasted 11 years without a problem and you detached something to remove some siding. You may have heard of common problems with deck collapses and now you are hoping to make hay out of an error in judgement that you made.

If that is the case, you will not likely find any friends here. There are probably some personal injury blogs that would love to have you chime in. Our liability premiums are high enough.

AAPaint

Hmmm....good thing I don't build anything! Something doesn't add up here, that's for sure.

__________________
-AAPaint

AA Quality Painting & Pressure Washing LLC
Jacksonville Painters
Jacksonville, FL.

Mike Finley

Rick you are going to get conjecture and what ifs at best here. Best to let you and your lawyer hash it out, since no matter what discussion you raise here in the end it will still come down to you and your lawyer hashing it out, everything in between is just conjecture and hearsay and maybe something of entertainment value at best.

dproc

What doesn't add up here is what was bolted to the siding? If there was no ledger. Was ea. joist bolted to the siding? if so, how the heck would that have been done? abitibi siding is a hard board siding but can't imagine being only bolted to siding.