GOT A STRONG STOMACH?

The decks depicted in these pictures usually suffered and died in a horrible way...

Mostly due to the selection of the wrong materials, poor workmanship or both.

Revising a famous line from "Apocalypse Now" where the character walks out of his tent and proclaims

"I love the smell of DRY-ROT in the morning."

I will tell you that time after time, a deck seems ok, a little problem here, a little problem there and WHAM!, I open the deck and it's a can of worms.

Learn the easy way or the hard way what the results of cheap, poor waterproofing and flashing can be. Very often, I see jobs that went bad and what I find out is the owner took the lowest bid they could find. You get what you pay for when it comes to waterproofing.

You can buy cheap waterproofing, or you can buy good waterproofing, but you can't buy good n' cheap waterproofing!

Did you know that Central Coast Waterproofing, DeckExpert.com's sister company installs, repairs and maintains waterproof decks throughout California?

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it today for a free estimate for your HOA, Condo's, Hotel/Motel's decks, walkways, pool decks & decorative coating needs. Authorized installer of Desert Brand, Mer-Ko, Life Deck, Pli-Dek and other coating systems.

Enjoy our many pictures of horrible things gone wrong on these decks and take heed...ignore the requirements and conditions needed for a successful deck installation and it just might be your deck that shows up here next!

NOW ENABLED! Vote For Your Favorite Horrible Pictures...click on the title of any Hall of Shame pic, it will open in a new window and then you can rate the picture/job from best to worst.

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Cable TV wires right above flashing will cause a problem...

These cables will probably allow water to run right down them, into the building and simulate a deck leak. Properly run cables are a must to prevent water intrusion.

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Weep screed at height of deck.

This condition often causes the water weeping out of the wall to back up into a building!

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Urethane Coated Deck burned up from lack of maintenance.

Frequent resealing would have prevented costly replacement of this deck system.

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Unmaintained deck has deteriorated severely.

Another deck that cost a lot more to fix than it would have to maintained!

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Stripped of the coating, plywood underneath reveals where water ponded for long period of time.

Mold and deterioration of the plywood substrate required removal and replacement of the plywood on this deck in Newbury Park.

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Water has rusted out scupper.

This scupper and a lot of flashing had to be removed and replaced after water intrusion damaged it severely.

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Hard to see, but the vinyl coating

failed at the outside scuppers

edge, curling up and making a dam.

Water intruded into the substrate and framing, causing over $8,000.00 in damages.

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Poor quality control caused this urethane installation to go bad at a winery in Paso Robles.installation

Probable cause is moisture in the plywood is trying to escape as vapor while the coating was drying out. Moisture testing of substrate is essential in urethane deck

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Failed coating at fascia edge.

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Here the original installer never covered the flashing entirely, with disasorous results years later.

Original installations methods can be incorrect. Without independednt evaluations, this may never get picked up until too late.

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RIP- Here lies aSlip Sheet System, dead from lack of maintenance.

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The highlighted area has deck material over the weep screed,

blocking water from getting out.

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Someone "repaired" the stair stringer,

but didn't flash the stringer first.

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There's a scupper under those leaves somewhere!

The complaint from an owner was there deck was ponding-this is what we found when we investigated!

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Downspout terminating on deck now forces scuppers to take all the roof and deck water! This is not what the scuppers in place were designed to do.

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Scupper barely has any clearance to let water run off.

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And the best picture of all is this one; but it gets better...

When I looked at this again, I realized the deck installer had gone around the base of the dish, without bothering to remove the dish! Talk about all time lousy installers, hope he's not still working.

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