What Causes Deck Post Settling?

A deck should feel rock solid. When it starts to feel bouncy, tilts toward one corner, or looks like it is pulling away from the house, the posts holding it up have started to sink. It is a common problem around Atlanta, and it is almost always about what is under the posts, not the deck itself.

What is happening under your deck

A deck is only as steady as the footings under its support posts. Those footings are supposed to sit on solid, compacted ground so they stay put. When the soil under a footing softens or washes away, the footing sinks, the post drops with it, and that corner of the deck goes down. Do that to one or two posts and the whole structure begins to lean, sag, and feel unsafe to stand on.

Why deck posts settle

• Posts set without a real footing. Plenty of decks were built with posts sitting on nothing more than a shallow pad or bare dirt. There is nothing there to keep them from sinking.
• Footings poured too thin or too shallow. A small footing does not spread the load, and a shallow one sits right in the zone where the soil moves the most.
• Georgia clay. Our red clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry, season after season, and that constant movement works footings loose.
• Water and erosion. A deck on a slope, or one with a downspout draining beside it, loses the soil out from under its footings over time.
• Rot at the base. A wood post sitting against wet ground eventually rots right where it matters most, at the bottom.

Warning signs

• A deck that bounces or feels springy underfoot
• One corner or side sitting lower than the rest
• The deck pulling away from the ledger board where it attaches to the house
• Posts that look tilted, or no longer sit square on their footings
• Railings that wobble, or gaps opening at the connections

How we fix it

We do not patch the symptom, and we do not tell you to tear the deck down. We drive steel piers down through the loose soil until they reach solid ground that will not move, then transfer the weight of the deck onto them and lift it back toward level. Steel brackets lock the posts in place for good. It is the same deep-pier method we use to stabilize house foundations, put to work under your deck.

One thing worth being clear on: we handle the structural side, the piers and the footings, not the carpentry. We make the deck solid and level again from underneath. If your deck is sinking or leaning, that is the fix that lasts. You can read more on our deck post repair page.