Building Two Cedar Tone Decks in Sioux Falls, SD

A month or two ago we were contacted by a home owner on the West side (57106) of Sioux Falls, South Dakota to come out and take a look at their deck. They needed new siding and as they were getting a quote, the contractors who were giving the siding estimate recommended they replaced their two decks first.

We stopped out to take a look and after further inspection, they indeed needed new decks.

The front deck had dropped on the one side about 4-6 inches lower than the rest of the deck.
The back deck was only fastened to the house with galvanized nails (which ins’t up to our local building code). The approved galvanized lag screws were not being used at all to attach it to the house and there was a 1” - 2” gap between the deck and the siding.

We recommended to the new home owner that they stop using the deck until we came by and replaced it.

Both decks took approximately 4-5 days to replace (we had a few rain delays in there).

Day one was pretty much demo, front deck build, and back deck footings. Most of our decks now use the DiamondPier system that you find in many local home improvement stores, such as Lowes.
The second day was installing railing posts on the front deck (both front and back decks had the same type of railing). It also included the main framing for the back deck.
The third day we had footing and framing inspections from our local city building services department. Once we passed, we moved on to deck boards and installing railing posts on the back deck.
The fourth day we finished everything up and called in the final inspection from Sioux Falls Building Services.

There were a few noteable items that stick out during this build.

The customer’s family was absolutely wonderful to work with. Both the husband, wife, and children were so very kind during our time there.
The existing footings got in the way and so we had to move the deck a foot to one side.
We had to put some temporary flashing (Menards, another home improvement center, has deck flashing that works really well for this and composite decking) in place until they’re able to replace the siding.

Our crew had an absolute blast working on this project and would welcome many more like it in the future.