Video: How to Attach a Deck to a House

SEBASTOPOL — Host, Sarah Rutan: When remodeling your deck, its important to know about proper installation. Today we’re in Sebastopol with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Steve Labourdette of Labourdette Construction to learn more.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Steve Labourdette: I’m going to show you the proper way to attach a deck to a house that will ensure years of good quality without any rot to the house or the deck and the structural way to hold the deck together well.

So, one of the most important parts when you are attaching a deck to the house is the flashing. That’s this metal piece here is the flashing. This black stuff here is also the membrane flashing. This is the ledger, which ill show you in a minute, that’s the structural part of the deck and this is showing some siding which is a great siding to use for under the deck because oftentimes when you are replacing a deck, the house has been rotted because it wasn’t attached this way and you want to use a really good rot proof siding which can be underneath that deck. You never have to see it but its never going to rot because it is actually made of cement.

So the flashing here as you can see goes over the metal so when that rain hits this flashing and this has whatever siding your house has over it over this and as that rain hits the siding, the stucco, whatever it is, its going to hit this flashing, then its going to hit this metal and then its going to hit this other flashing and then its going to hit the ledger. Behind the ledger, you’ve got more flashing and the siding like I discussed this cement siding. So lets take a look over at this house and I can show you how all these pieces look when they are on the house.

You can see this part of a Z bar right here is also right here on the house is that part of the Z bar right there. You can see it’s on top of the ledger keeping that water off the ledger. Now on top of this metal is the rubberized flashing like I showed you which ties into the other flashing of whatever your house is protected with, hopefully protected with felt paper behind the siding of your house.

Now this here is the ledger and you can see that’s been painted and that’s where the deck is structurally attached to the house. You can see the bracket here, which is also attached to the house, which we did not have in the mock up. You can see here is the cement siding behind the flashing and some more Z bar down here. So all of these steps here are like shingles in a way where one is keeping the water off of the thing that is below it and then you get all the way down to where you have your house protected from top to bottom from the rain intruding in.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local top-rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.