Thread: A Little help with some deck footings please

The construction method of the deck overall looked good to me but I question the footings. Can you use the pre made cement pier footings at the stairs structure or do those footings also need to be below the frost line. Any help here is appreciated.

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I see the preformed concrete pads all the time. While, I am not too fond of them, they are allowed around here and I rarely see a problem with them.

That would not concern me if the deck is low, say less than 30" off the ground. I would write up the deck you show. Around here, footings should be 12" below grade. Did you check the concrete pads to see if they extend below the frost line?

The deck is shoddy. No 4x4s for guardrail at the corners or at the stair rail.


Here's a good link.

Inspecting a Deck, Illustrated - InterNACHI

I couldn't check the depth of the poured cement footings without a lot of digging. It looks like they dug the holes and framed a 4 inch pad at grade level. No posts at the corners(railing) is very common around here. Also no posts at the base of the stairs. Its allowed by the municipal inspector but I recommended to the client that we reinspect before the warranty expires. If it shows some failure, we will request repairs with the builder then. Thanks for the help and any other comments are welcome. I am forwarding the link to this thread to the client so I'm sure he will appreciate your feedback as well.

Is the only location of the precast footing blocks under the mid point of the stairs?
If so, I would say they are fine because they are not required to be there anyway. I would be more concerned about the heel of the stringer not sitting on the slab.

Get a 2 1/2 foot metal probe from RABCO. Not expensive. Used by anyone doing spetic inspections.
They work GREAT to determine of you have a slab that is partly buried or if there is a real foundation.

A $2 paving pin, persuaded with a 3-lb. maul, work just as well. Also, the Internachi link for inspecting decks contains some erroneous information (or at least not conforming to the IRC deck guidelines), so be careful on how closely you adhere to it.

In our jurisdiction we allow them if they are embedded into a poured concrete pad.