Deck Repair in Crestview Hills, KY

Crestview Hills (ZIP 41017) has plenty of decks where the guard's bottom rail rests directly on the surface. It looks tidy, it keeps a ball from rolling off, and it produces a line of rot along the outside of the deck that people find years later and cannot explain.

A rail lying flat on boards makes a channel. Water runs along the deck toward the edge and reaches that rail, and instead of going over or through it, it stops. Debris packs into the angle and holds it there. The boards under the rail never dry, because the rail shades them and there is no air gap, so a strip of the surface an inch or two wide spends most of the year wet. Rot in a straight line parallel to the edge is nearly always this, and the give-away is that it stops exactly where the rail stops.

So the rail comes off, the boards under it get assessed properly, and it goes back with a gap under it. Anything from a quarter inch upward lets water through and air move, and on most guards it is achieved by packing the rail up at the posts. Where the design will not allow a gap, the alternative is to detail the boards under it so they shed, which is slower and works. It is a small change and it is the difference between repairing that strip once and repairing it again in six years.