LESLIE: Now we’ve got Betty who’s got a problem with a deck. What’s happening?
BETTY: When we built our house, they put the deck on after the siding was put on.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
BETTY: And so they put the board – like the 2×8 or 10, whatever it is that they put, first, up against your house …
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) To the house, yeah.
BETTY: Well, we’ve got siding underneath and it’s Masonite siding and that stuff really is not very good siding. And I was wondering, is there a way to keep the water – the water from the deck is going back and getting back behind the board that holds the deck on.
TOM: Right. Yeah, and that’s unsafe.
BETTY: And it’s deteriorating the siding. Is there any way to keep the water from going back behind there?
TOM: At this point, no; because it was built incorrectly.
BETTY: Yeah.
TOM: The way to do this is when the siding is off, the deck box beam is flashed; so the flashing actually goes over the deck box beam and up under the siding. So is there a way to stop it now; with it built like …?
LESLIE: With the entire deck in place?
TOM: Yeah. No, not really. Yeah, you’d have to replace the siding or pull the deck box beam off. It’s a pretty major repair.
BETTY: (inaudible at 0:31:53.3)
TOM: Yeah, and that hardboard siding; you know eventually, Betty, you’re going to have to replace all of that. It’s awful stuff. I used to – I was in the home inspection business for 20 years and whenever I saw homes that had that composite siding, I used to tell folks it was fine as long as you painted it everyday before you went to work. The stuff just melts. It just melts.
BETTY: Yeah, well I kept it painted real good and I haven’t had any trouble anywhere but there.
TOM: Yeah, because the water is trapped against it. So maybe it’s worth doing the repair.
BETTY: Yeah. Well I added a board on top of the deck – you know, about a one-inch – and that keeps the water out away from it.
TOM: Yeah, but it’s not a weatherproofing repair, Betty, and what you don’t understand is that if that starts to rot away the connection, this deck can become very unsafe. So it really needs to be done correctly.
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