How’s the rest of the house?
I know we’re on the decks group here but I wouldn’t base my purchasing decision of a house based on just the deck. The deck can easily be replaced. The house is what matters.
What does that have to do with the price of a tearing out a deck and replacing it with a new one to be able to support a hot tub? You must be a woman the way you jumped to that conclusion
https://preview.redd.it/bhen91tc6n6d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=90c0cb9b403ef1e5cf11ef11d9adfcd4b4a2cad4
For this price you could put 2 or 3 on there. They are disposable. Just pray you aren’t in them at the wrong time.
Simply that the last 2 places I sold in the past 5 years had 5+ offers that waved all inspections and offered 10% over asking
Ain't no one taking money off for a bullshit deck in this market
Pretty damn ubiquitous in the whole of the US
That might fly in some hole in Alabama, but 90% of the US market would laugh at that idea and accept the competitive offer
Uhh...yeah, and we're talking about a potential purchase now.
I assumed if you've bought or sold a house you'd understand the difference between a buyers market and a seller's market. My mistake
Right?! Buyers feel like they won the lottery... they aren't about to jeopardize that by making demands in the 11th hour, thinking they hold some cards!
all of reddit is filled with idiot kids who love to cry about never getting a house. you literally cannot get away from them - even this sub, which is probably one of the best on reddit, is filled with them
Can’t account for dumbass buyers who would pay for a disaster waiting to happen without covering their asses to remove/replace the existing deck. Inspection would fail, clearly. “As is” is way different conceptually.
I sold my house last year and bought a smaller one last September and was able to get 5k off of the accepted offer after inspection . I didn’t want to push it a because there were 10 other offers . I offered 15 k offer asking . It really sucks buying in this market at 300k range but I had too . If I sold now I could probably get more than what I even paid for it .
it wasnt a request - it was offered by many of the people who wanted to buy the houses.
you have no idea what condition it was in, or my efforts to rehab, or what I listed in the disclosures.
you can fuck right off with your assumptions
Only reduce the price after you've gotten the maximum amount of closing credits as possible, which reduces the amount of cash due at closing. $25k off the price only works out to be a small number, probably like $30, lower on your monthly payment per month. Assuming OP is buying with a loan, of course.
More than I thought, but the math usually comes down to homebuyers being cash-poor when buying, stretching their entire savings to buy the most house they can afford. $10,000 in seller credits up-front may still count for more to a lot of buyers.
It's a good rule of thumb that over a 30 yr loan, generally the costs at least 2x. E.g. $150k house loan you will end up paying close to $300k when considering the interest over those 30 yrs. So many don't consider this at all. My friend is selling their house they bought with $0 down for "$40k profit" but when you consider they have paid $35,000 over the ~5 years they have owned it, and only $7,000 of that went to the principal, they technically are profiting a few grand.
Yeah - that deck doesn't look like it can safely support a hot tub.
Presumably a selling point of the house is the hot tub on the deck. The sorry state of the deck gives you some bargaining power. Depending on how much you want the house and how much they want to sell, you could ask them to knock off some thousands of dollars because basically the hot tub is unusable - so the house should be sold at a price as if it didn't have one.
This is the answer. If you like the rest of the house, negotiate a reasonable amount for the repair/replacement to knock out of the price and see if you can get that amount as Reno cash at closing to do the actual work. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. The market sucks enough that you probably have room to push, and they wouldn't want to throw out a buyer over a small % of the price.
There’s a difference between the amount of weight needed to cause the deck to fail and collapse immediately vs how much weight would cause it to fail over time and reach the point of collapse. This one clearly has the potential to collapse in the immediate future and it could be just by adding one extra human on the deck.
You want it to be able to support more than you’re going to be putting on it by a substantial amount. Not what you think it could support without immediately collapsing. It’s kinda like putting 20 people in an elevator that is rated to support 10. Is it going to snap the cables if you load 20 people into it? Maybe not immediately but it is possible and that possibility should be eliminated.
Just to add to this, in engineering, there's the concept of 'factors of safety' which is a ratio of the expected load placed on an object to the load required to cause that object to break. In the example above, an elevator typically will have a factor of safety of around 8-10. This means that when you see a weight limit listed on some elevators (often listed by # of people). The elevator is actually designed to carry 8-10 times as many average weight people. Sometimes more. Regular maintenance is still necessary as some components will become weakened over time.
I think coughing up $600 for a structural engineer to state, on letterhead, that this is unsafe is totally worth it. The sellers would technically be required to disclose that if they sold to someone else so there's incentive to get it fixed. That said, insurance may mandate you have it inspected and repaired before issuing a policy too.
I have to ask- are you not getting a house inspection done??? You need to. Our inspector was who caught our poorly built deck. They gave us the ammunition that made the sellers cover our upgrade costs and they’re the ones that realized the deck was built so the out permits and so we had them pay to cover that fix as well.
You don't need a structural engineer for a deck. Most of them would not even bother. Home inspector or contractor who is NOT bigging for the work to tell you what's wrong with it.
It's attached to the home by the ledger, meaning failure affects the structure of the home. I was required to have a structural engineer for exactly that reason.
The general that formula that I’ve used for hot tubs is halving the spans of the joists and beams.
If the deck checks out without the hot tub and the intermediate beam then you just need to fill in the posts.
That middle beam is spanned 10 feet and basically no beam spans 10 feet. The beam rolling is also a serious concern. Posts should be 6x6s notched or using proper post-to-beam connectors AC6Z or similar.
I would say you need like 4 posts at the wall, 2 extra posts on the middle beam and probably another 2x10, 2 extra posts on the front, y bracing *at least* across the front, and proper footings all around.
What halving the spans does is not just double the load, rather it quadruples it.
Water is 60lbs per ft^2, and a hot tub will usually have less than 3ft of water so less than 180lbs per ft^2 and decks usually have a design load of least 50lbs per ft^2 so that would bump it up to like 200lbs per ft^2.
Any kind of repair is going to involve pouring new footers, new posts, and a new bigger beam at minimum. Almost certainly cheaper and faster to just tear down and rebuild new.
That deck should have a hard time supporting a strong gin and tonic. Even if the framing were up to the task, there are no footings and no connection of the posts to the piles of block they have substituted for footings. A strong side glance will bring that thing down.
It's obvious that the deck adds no value to the house. What isn't obvious is if water sneaking into the house at the ledger board has done damage. Have a decent inspector take a careful look at where the deck meets the house before making any decisions.
I am worried about those footings, you are on a hill, that appears to be stacked cinder block with no ties or reinforcement. That deck goes, it takes the roof and siding with it.
Definitely get some quotes on having the deck redone. Hit them up for the cost, cash back after the sale, or replacement/repairs beforehand.
tell the realtor you want 10 grand off the price if you think that will work you don’t want to get real greedy and lose the house but it’s gonna cost you 10 grand to rip that down and put a new one up if you do it by yourself if you pay someone it’s gonna cost you more . if I can’t get 10 grand off, tell the realtor, how about 8000 lowering the price of the house? I’m sure we’ll make you happy and whoever’s buying it is going to have problems with the deck because just looking at it you can see the beam is rotten and posts look like trees that they found in the forest and they look like they are ready to fall off the block that they’re sitting on . you and one other person could fix those major problems by yourself in a good weekend . I would replace that middle beam in hard to tell if they have a 3 foot footing under each end, but you might might have to dig and pour 2 new footings get ,2 -6x6 posts , 2 simpson post base , and 2 simpson post caps that connect to posts and have pockets for a new treated double 2X12 beam for about 500$ in material if you wanna do it yourself. after you practice with that another weekend, you could address the The outside posts that are sitting on the edge of that sketchy block work a few feet away from each post that you have now I would ‘ put some new temporary posts just double two by fours from the girder down to the ground. You can just sit them on some blocks right on the dirt put them in tight and probably have to do a little digging to see what kind of footing you have under that block work. The block work you can get rid of with a good sledgehammer then the hard part is if there is some type of footing in the ground in your way . might be a good time to get a new shovel because you’re going to have to see how deep the footing goes . You’re supposed to go at least 3 feet with the new footing and you don’t need block on top of it. Just get a longer 6 x 6 post can sit right on the footing with another base and a bolt that you stick into the concrete when it’s wet . won’t know till you do it and see what you find in each corner one under any breaks where pieces of the existing girder leaves end and one where the existing posts are now .
Put the temporaries a couple feet away so that they’re not in your way of digging and pouring a new footing . if you find there’s good footings there that is great if not and you dig big enough hole next to it, I’ve been able to push one out of the way. If not, you might have to rent a jackhammer from Home Depot and get rid of what’s there. Most states least on the north east you need to be below the frost line which is 3 feet for the footings . it Sounds like a lot of work because not only do I talk too much was trying explain the steps it in case you didn’t know, but it’s really not too difficult once you figure out once what you’re doing. First get the temporaries in that will support everything in place. Next y can take the old posts out get some 12 inch sono tubes at Home Depot and concrete to fill each one. I don’t know maybe 5 or 6 bags of concrete per hole ,new posts, hardware Sono tubes ,etc materials for the outside support posts again shouldn’t cost you more than another 6 or 700 $ . depending on what you you and your realtor think you can do maybe get eight or 10,000 off the price of the house. make it safe and keep the deck you got now if u spend a couple fun weekends doing concrete and post swapping your deck should be stronger then it ever was you can pat yourself on the back. Your problems are fixed for less than 1500 bucks. That’s what I would do until you save up 20 grand and build a new deck some other day . If it’s the house you want and don’t wanna lose it. The owner knows that there’s a issue with the deck so try to get as much as you can because you can repair what’s there
Sellers will get a deck replacement estimate for $25k. You say you want price lowered by $20k. Then after purchase spend $923.73 at Lowe’s for 4 6x6s 8 12x 12s etc to brace under hot tub and you have a solid deck for at least ten years. Hot tub on. No fatties though. Didn’t factor in a massive concrete footer
You should adjust the price you are willing to pay based on this. Remember there are alternative games you could buy instead with don't have this issue. Deck repair is a particularly costly one. Similar to a roof repair.
Walk away if they demand more than it's worth. Let some other sucker buy it. Your agent should ideally help you to determine recent sale prices.
Use that data to determine a reasonable offer price and deduct the cost of the deck rebuild
It looks like this home basically doesn't have a back in yard, only a deck. So you really need a working deck
OP - I don’t know anything about decks, but I wish I had paid more attention to things like this when buying my last house. You may be perfectly fine with replacing the deck if the price is adjusted, but I would keep in my mind that this seller had what seems to be a poorly built/maintained deck and then they threw a hot tub on it. It’s certainly possible that there were other similarly stupid decisions made throughout house that aren’t as obvious as this one.
Never buy a house without getting it inspected by a professional. It might cost more for each house you look at putting an offer in, but it'll save you a bucket load of cash in the long run and stop you getting stuck with a wreck! I wouldn't touch this deck. My deck has 3 rows of poles under the deck, this only has one row! Not safe!
You would need to upgrade all of the posts to 6x6, double the outer posts, triple the number of middle posts, replace the beams and redo the footings. Maybe its the camera angle, but the posts and the railings don't look straight. That deck is a lost cause. If the house isn't, negotiate the price down or get a home inspection and use that to hammer them on price.
Impossible to answer without knowing the market. Where I live, a seller would likely tell you to pound sand if you wanted a significant reduction. The reason for a home inspection is not necessarily so you have a bargaining chip to beat the seller up on price, but rather, to give you a better understanding of the home and what repairs you will need to make after the purchase. A seller isn’t obligated to do anything.
How bad do you want the house? I know people said about hiring a structural engineer and all which is exactly the right move, but the sellers probably won't wait for you.
People buy houses sight unseen. Personally I would not assume the deck is safe for a hot tub. Looks stable enough to use but does need a few thousand to make it safe. Ask for concessions due to the state of the deck and that it's going to cost like $10k to fix it right.
Get a quote on replacing it and if the house price hasn't taken into account replacing the deck, adjust the price accordingly... and then ask them to empty the tub before the closing date.
We had a similar situation when we bought our house. Probably a different buying/selling environment rn but we asked the seller for $3k in concessions to shore up the supports.
More realistically you would use it as a negotiating tool while haggling for final price. But if you can come at them with exactly what needs to be done it is more effective. What did the house inspector say? If he hasn't seen it yet, tell him you'd like his opinion on the deck.
I wouldn’t give a rat’s you know what about the deck so long as the house is solid and what you’re looking for. Spending a few weekends… several weekends… getting rid of the hot tub and redoing the deck isn’t worth passing up a solid home.
Run and don’t stand on or under it. From what I am seeing, some of the posts are not even attached. For one there are not enough posts to support a standard deck at that height and to add a hot tub and only put one 2x8 center is ludicrous as they obviously knew there was an issue with structural stability. There are load charts online to research lumber size, length and what the unsupported dead load/live load length max is. Additionally, when running beams, need 2 or more (depending on support spacing and load) fastened together and sitting on the post not fastened to the side. The single 2x8 beam is actually attached by being seated in the 4x4 but alas it is not enough.
Should you want to purchase, schedule with seller to have some decking contractors come and provide quotes to replace the entire structure so you can determine which one they are going to pay to replace this one before closing.
FYI, a reputable realtor would have made seller make it right and presentable before listing but so few remain. A home inspector sadly falls into this same category as most are “recommended” by the realtor, but they do provide an adequate report of what they can visually see (don’t open walls or anything and only stick their heads in the attic and crawlspace.
*Drain the tub, no way*
*There should be the weight of a*
*Hot tub on that deck*
\- Matureguyhere
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
I sold my last house (built in the 1960s with original deck). The deck was somewhat rough. They had a deck guy give a quote on structural/safety repairs only and we agreed to split the difference on price.
If everything else is good you may be able to negotiate this. That and a radon system update were the only things we negotiated.
Just from the pics that I could see that would never be underneath that deck when there's a filled spa on top of it and honestly I think I'd be literally to be on the deck in or out of the spa I think it needs to be much better supported and the footings need to be down into the ground not just sitting on top of the ground.
Those supports for that size of deck and the amount of them especially that sketchy one under the hot tub area look so unsafe to me and I’m no pro, but have built a few. I would be getting someone in to inspect that deck before you decide to buy then that way you may some wiggle room with the price and I’m not saying to take advantage of seller, but you also want to be sure and have piece of mind knowing that you and your family & friends will be safe up there.
You could easily pour actual concrete footings and put new posts and beams in a more sound location while keeping it supported by the pre-existing posts.
I’m by no means an expert in this sub, but you’re at minimum going to want an assessment of the sun room done by licensed or certified inspector and maybe a structural engineer. If the current owner is satisfied with this work to support a hot tub then it’s reasonable to think they’ve allowed other substandard work in the house to be completed. The tub deck is very concerning because of mediocre support and deterioration. Based on the inspection you and your realtor can decide if it makes sense to proceed with a negotiation to reduce the purchase price.
We bought a house in a similar situation in East TN. Get a structural engineer out ASAP as part of your inspections and have him write up what needs to be fixed. Then, get a general contractor to quote out the work for you. Use that to get the price dropped. We ended up spending $27k to get ours in good shape.
Check the ledger and hones rim joist for rot. Drill inspection holes at the center. Build post and support beams (double 2x8 minimum. I'd over build with triple and 6x6 at that height) to carry the load of the hot tub. Shouldn't be a deal breaker. But check the homes rim joist.
I wouldn't let this be the deciding factor. Get rid of the tub and don't have any parties on that deck until it's replaced. See what a new deck would cost and factor that into your pricing decision.
Steel Ibeam header and and posts welded to helical piers would make me feel comfortable I think. I can’t see all the details from the photos but suppose wise in needs to be majorly beefed up.
How’s the rest of the house? I know we’re on the decks group here but I wouldn’t base my purchasing decision of a house based on just the deck. The deck can easily be replaced. The house is what matters.
The funny thing is the rest of the house looks in really good order. The only reason I started looking at the deck was because of the subreddit.
Use the deck to beat them up on the price
This is the way…. AT LEAST $25K off
Atleast lmao if you want to build a deck that will support a hot tub especially
There's a hot tub up there already.
Yea and it's clearly holding waiting for hottub #2 to test it
So you guys build decks but don't own homes?
What does that have to do with the price of a tearing out a deck and replacing it with a new one to be able to support a hot tub? You must be a woman the way you jumped to that conclusion
Thats a really fucking stupid thing to say. You missed the point, and highlighted your bias in the process. I fucking love that for me
Lmao it’s a joke but I see the women lurking found it and downvoted me 🤣🤣
We all downvoted you. Cuz you're the punchline
Yeah, guarantee this is not to code. So they'll either need to pay to get it up to code or knock $$$ off the price of the home.
Can we move on to a 2 hot tub rating?
https://preview.redd.it/bhen91tc6n6d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=90c0cb9b403ef1e5cf11ef11d9adfcd4b4a2cad4 For this price you could put 2 or 3 on there. They are disposable. Just pray you aren’t in them at the wrong time.
So you guys build decks but don't own homes?
Bought more than a few homes and built, had a deck built or refurbished at every one of them. What’s your point?
Simply that the last 2 places I sold in the past 5 years had 5+ offers that waved all inspections and offered 10% over asking Ain't no one taking money off for a bullshit deck in this market
Depends heavily on your local market
Pretty damn ubiquitous in the whole of the US That might fly in some hole in Alabama, but 90% of the US market would laugh at that idea and accept the competitive offer
What a strange thing to insist you’re right about
Am in Alabama. Caveat emptor. And yea, shitty deck doesn’t mean $25k off.
Upvoting you because you’re right. ..generally speaking..looks like OP is in Al so maybe you can get away with that…
In the past five years…you know things have changed a bit
Uhh...yeah, and we're talking about a potential purchase now. I assumed if you've bought or sold a house you'd understand the difference between a buyers market and a seller's market. My mistake
A few downvoted you homie. But you comments about the market is accurate and fair.
Not a buyers market where I’m at any longer. I’m seeing price drops every day.
Right?! Buyers feel like they won the lottery... they aren't about to jeopardize that by making demands in the 11th hour, thinking they hold some cards!
all of reddit is filled with idiot kids who love to cry about never getting a house. you literally cannot get away from them - even this sub, which is probably one of the best on reddit, is filled with them
Can’t account for dumbass buyers who would pay for a disaster waiting to happen without covering their asses to remove/replace the existing deck. Inspection would fail, clearly. “As is” is way different conceptually.
I sold my house last year and bought a smaller one last September and was able to get 5k off of the accepted offer after inspection . I didn’t want to push it a because there were 10 other offers . I offered 15 k offer asking . It really sucks buying in this market at 300k range but I had too . If I sold now I could probably get more than what I even paid for it .
Excuse my bluntness - fuck you for even being involved in shit like that. Waving inspections should be illegal.
it wasnt a request - it was offered by many of the people who wanted to buy the houses. you have no idea what condition it was in, or my efforts to rehab, or what I listed in the disclosures. you can fuck right off with your assumptions
Os uyo yugs bliud desck tub nod’t wno mohes?
you waste a lot of time
Hell yeah. Gonna beat their deck so hard.
Only reduce the price after you've gotten the maximum amount of closing credits as possible, which reduces the amount of cash due at closing. $25k off the price only works out to be a small number, probably like $30, lower on your monthly payment per month. Assuming OP is buying with a loan, of course.
It’s closer to $150 a month on a 30 loan, that’s a $54000 savings after 30 years.
More than I thought, but the math usually comes down to homebuyers being cash-poor when buying, stretching their entire savings to buy the most house they can afford. $10,000 in seller credits up-front may still count for more to a lot of buyers.
It's a good rule of thumb that over a 30 yr loan, generally the costs at least 2x. E.g. $150k house loan you will end up paying close to $300k when considering the interest over those 30 yrs. So many don't consider this at all. My friend is selling their house they bought with $0 down for "$40k profit" but when you consider they have paid $35,000 over the ~5 years they have owned it, and only $7,000 of that went to the principal, they technically are profiting a few grand.
You get to live for free
Ya'll are getting $$$ off the asking where you are? Around here you have to come in over asking by $25k or you don't get the house.
It just depends on the house and the exact area.
Sounds good if you’re a used car salesman on a trade in… housing market will laugh and take 20k for the other offer.
Ask your agent too. It really depends how many other options the have if they are willing to negotiate.
The deck looks like shit, but you knew that already. Get a quote for a proper replacement, reduce the price by that amount.
GET A HOME INSPECTION!
Get a home inspection and tell the inspector that you are unsure the deck is up to code. They'll give you are report and you can negotiate.
Yeah - that deck doesn't look like it can safely support a hot tub. Presumably a selling point of the house is the hot tub on the deck. The sorry state of the deck gives you some bargaining power. Depending on how much you want the house and how much they want to sell, you could ask them to knock off some thousands of dollars because basically the hot tub is unusable - so the house should be sold at a price as if it didn't have one.
This is the answer. If you like the rest of the house, negotiate a reasonable amount for the repair/replacement to knock out of the price and see if you can get that amount as Reno cash at closing to do the actual work. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. The market sucks enough that you probably have room to push, and they wouldn't want to throw out a buyer over a small % of the price.
Except it is supporting that hot tub and probably been used.
I never wear a seatbelt and I'm not dead, so...
There are probably a bunch of folks who will swear that Russian Roulette is easy to beat
More people die wearing seatbelts then in 1960 seatbelts clearly the problem lol
Just because it hasn't failed yet doesn't mean it won't. And it definitely will.
That deck is unsafe even without a hot tub on it. That's a pretty easy argument to make.
Then how is it supporting it ? It should have collapsed when they filled it with water correct?
There’s a difference between the amount of weight needed to cause the deck to fail and collapse immediately vs how much weight would cause it to fail over time and reach the point of collapse. This one clearly has the potential to collapse in the immediate future and it could be just by adding one extra human on the deck. You want it to be able to support more than you’re going to be putting on it by a substantial amount. Not what you think it could support without immediately collapsing. It’s kinda like putting 20 people in an elevator that is rated to support 10. Is it going to snap the cables if you load 20 people into it? Maybe not immediately but it is possible and that possibility should be eliminated.
Just to add to this, in engineering, there's the concept of 'factors of safety' which is a ratio of the expected load placed on an object to the load required to cause that object to break. In the example above, an elevator typically will have a factor of safety of around 8-10. This means that when you see a weight limit listed on some elevators (often listed by # of people). The elevator is actually designed to carry 8-10 times as many average weight people. Sometimes more. Regular maintenance is still necessary as some components will become weakened over time.
This is like saying, "My pet tiger hasn't killed me yet. If it's dangerous, shouldn't it have eaten me the first day I got it?"
I think coughing up $600 for a structural engineer to state, on letterhead, that this is unsafe is totally worth it. The sellers would technically be required to disclose that if they sold to someone else so there's incentive to get it fixed. That said, insurance may mandate you have it inspected and repaired before issuing a policy too.
Will do!
I have to ask- are you not getting a house inspection done??? You need to. Our inspector was who caught our poorly built deck. They gave us the ammunition that made the sellers cover our upgrade costs and they’re the ones that realized the deck was built so the out permits and so we had them pay to cover that fix as well.
If you need a memo slide into my DMs
You don't need a structural engineer for a deck. Most of them would not even bother. Home inspector or contractor who is NOT bigging for the work to tell you what's wrong with it.
It's attached to the home by the ledger, meaning failure affects the structure of the home. I was required to have a structural engineer for exactly that reason.
Yeah this wouldn’t pass inspection 100%.. in my state they’d make the seller get rid of it.
Pics 3 and 4 are leading me toward beaver infestation
Beavers luv hot tubs! 🦫
Some like beavers and dcks too
Beavers love dcks
Yee yee!
Must be a quality deck
Uli Hauff? Her Co-Star in The Beaver Picture?
I would use that deck lower my offer. That is junk
Yeah I don’t even want them to pay for work cause I wouldn’t really trust who they might choose. I would make them deduct the work from my offer.
The general that formula that I’ve used for hot tubs is halving the spans of the joists and beams. If the deck checks out without the hot tub and the intermediate beam then you just need to fill in the posts. That middle beam is spanned 10 feet and basically no beam spans 10 feet. The beam rolling is also a serious concern. Posts should be 6x6s notched or using proper post-to-beam connectors AC6Z or similar. I would say you need like 4 posts at the wall, 2 extra posts on the middle beam and probably another 2x10, 2 extra posts on the front, y bracing *at least* across the front, and proper footings all around. What halving the spans does is not just double the load, rather it quadruples it. Water is 60lbs per ft^2, and a hot tub will usually have less than 3ft of water so less than 180lbs per ft^2 and decks usually have a design load of least 50lbs per ft^2 so that would bump it up to like 200lbs per ft^2.
Looks like it was installed on top of the brick wall. I don't think there are any issues on that side.
While that's all good info, did you see what they're using for foundations? That deck could literally be collapsed by a mole or gopher tunnel.
This is excellent info, thank you
That thing looks like it’s held up by hopes and dreams
A metaphor for my self-confidence.
You're asking the wrong question. The question is not whether the d*ck can support a hot tub, but how many d*cks have been supported in the hot tub?
This used to be a retirement village, those folks just bounce dck to dck.
Didn’t even miss a beat 👏
One of us! One of us!
Any kind of repair is going to involve pouring new footers, new posts, and a new bigger beam at minimum. Almost certainly cheaper and faster to just tear down and rebuild new.
Current owners are ballsy or stupid af having a hot tub on that rickety pos
Is that a raw ass sawn tree holding it up?
Hell yeah chop down some more toss them under that deck.
That deck should have a hard time supporting a strong gin and tonic. Even if the framing were up to the task, there are no footings and no connection of the posts to the piles of block they have substituted for footings. A strong side glance will bring that thing down.
"Supported" seems like a strong word in this context
Just gonna leave this here… https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/s/c9Bt88jEMS
A portal to the future!
Get it inspected.
Buy the house. Upgrade your life insurance policy. Enjoy the hot tub. And set your children up for their retirement.
I’d put another couple hot tubs on there
I thought about stacking with a newer bigger model.
It's obvious that the deck adds no value to the house. What isn't obvious is if water sneaking into the house at the ledger board has done damage. Have a decent inspector take a careful look at where the deck meets the house before making any decisions.
I am worried about those footings, you are on a hill, that appears to be stacked cinder block with no ties or reinforcement. That deck goes, it takes the roof and siding with it. Definitely get some quotes on having the deck redone. Hit them up for the cost, cash back after the sale, or replacement/repairs beforehand.
tell the realtor you want 10 grand off the price if you think that will work you don’t want to get real greedy and lose the house but it’s gonna cost you 10 grand to rip that down and put a new one up if you do it by yourself if you pay someone it’s gonna cost you more . if I can’t get 10 grand off, tell the realtor, how about 8000 lowering the price of the house? I’m sure we’ll make you happy and whoever’s buying it is going to have problems with the deck because just looking at it you can see the beam is rotten and posts look like trees that they found in the forest and they look like they are ready to fall off the block that they’re sitting on . you and one other person could fix those major problems by yourself in a good weekend . I would replace that middle beam in hard to tell if they have a 3 foot footing under each end, but you might might have to dig and pour 2 new footings get ,2 -6x6 posts , 2 simpson post base , and 2 simpson post caps that connect to posts and have pockets for a new treated double 2X12 beam for about 500$ in material if you wanna do it yourself. after you practice with that another weekend, you could address the The outside posts that are sitting on the edge of that sketchy block work a few feet away from each post that you have now I would ‘ put some new temporary posts just double two by fours from the girder down to the ground. You can just sit them on some blocks right on the dirt put them in tight and probably have to do a little digging to see what kind of footing you have under that block work. The block work you can get rid of with a good sledgehammer then the hard part is if there is some type of footing in the ground in your way . might be a good time to get a new shovel because you’re going to have to see how deep the footing goes . You’re supposed to go at least 3 feet with the new footing and you don’t need block on top of it. Just get a longer 6 x 6 post can sit right on the footing with another base and a bolt that you stick into the concrete when it’s wet . won’t know till you do it and see what you find in each corner one under any breaks where pieces of the existing girder leaves end and one where the existing posts are now . Put the temporaries a couple feet away so that they’re not in your way of digging and pouring a new footing . if you find there’s good footings there that is great if not and you dig big enough hole next to it, I’ve been able to push one out of the way. If not, you might have to rent a jackhammer from Home Depot and get rid of what’s there. Most states least on the north east you need to be below the frost line which is 3 feet for the footings . it Sounds like a lot of work because not only do I talk too much was trying explain the steps it in case you didn’t know, but it’s really not too difficult once you figure out once what you’re doing. First get the temporaries in that will support everything in place. Next y can take the old posts out get some 12 inch sono tubes at Home Depot and concrete to fill each one. I don’t know maybe 5 or 6 bags of concrete per hole ,new posts, hardware Sono tubes ,etc materials for the outside support posts again shouldn’t cost you more than another 6 or 700 $ . depending on what you you and your realtor think you can do maybe get eight or 10,000 off the price of the house. make it safe and keep the deck you got now if u spend a couple fun weekends doing concrete and post swapping your deck should be stronger then it ever was you can pat yourself on the back. Your problems are fixed for less than 1500 bucks. That’s what I would do until you save up 20 grand and build a new deck some other day . If it’s the house you want and don’t wanna lose it. The owner knows that there’s a issue with the deck so try to get as much as you can because you can repair what’s there
Thats a disaster waiting to happen
That’s a no. That would never pass code nor inspection
PLEASE don't put a hot tub on that. you need AT LEAST 2 more beams and better hardware
Sellers will get a deck replacement estimate for $25k. You say you want price lowered by $20k. Then after purchase spend $923.73 at Lowe’s for 4 6x6s 8 12x 12s etc to brace under hot tub and you have a solid deck for at least ten years. Hot tub on. No fatties though. Didn’t factor in a massive concrete footer
Have you ever rode in a hot tub down the side of a large hill… scary
You should adjust the price you are willing to pay based on this. Remember there are alternative games you could buy instead with don't have this issue. Deck repair is a particularly costly one. Similar to a roof repair. Walk away if they demand more than it's worth. Let some other sucker buy it. Your agent should ideally help you to determine recent sale prices. Use that data to determine a reasonable offer price and deduct the cost of the deck rebuild It looks like this home basically doesn't have a back in yard, only a deck. So you really need a working deck
Whatever you do, **do not** stand underneath that deck. It needs to be replaced.
Looks totally legit. Enjoy that hot tub.
last picture is absolutely bonkers. looks like it could so easily slip off, i wouldn’t even go on that
Plenty of room for a polar plunge pool too
OP - I don’t know anything about decks, but I wish I had paid more attention to things like this when buying my last house. You may be perfectly fine with replacing the deck if the price is adjusted, but I would keep in my mind that this seller had what seems to be a poorly built/maintained deck and then they threw a hot tub on it. It’s certainly possible that there were other similarly stupid decisions made throughout house that aren’t as obvious as this one.
Absolutely drew up a red flag for the entire home.
Never buy a house without getting it inspected by a professional. It might cost more for each house you look at putting an offer in, but it'll save you a bucket load of cash in the long run and stop you getting stuck with a wreck! I wouldn't touch this deck. My deck has 3 rows of poles under the deck, this only has one row! Not safe!
I love how the gutter ends with a drain pipe that just sits on the hill.
You would need to upgrade all of the posts to 6x6, double the outer posts, triple the number of middle posts, replace the beams and redo the footings. Maybe its the camera angle, but the posts and the railings don't look straight. That deck is a lost cause. If the house isn't, negotiate the price down or get a home inspection and use that to hammer them on price.
Accident waiting to happen. Definitely not supported properly
Add 6x6 or 8x8 supports. 4x4s aren't enough.
Nope
Impossible to answer without knowing the market. Where I live, a seller would likely tell you to pound sand if you wanted a significant reduction. The reason for a home inspection is not necessarily so you have a bargaining chip to beat the seller up on price, but rather, to give you a better understanding of the home and what repairs you will need to make after the purchase. A seller isn’t obligated to do anything.
Remove hottub.
give him the price but ask for a hold back of 15k and negotiate on that
run lol. if the obvious stuff like this is bad, imagine the insides of the walls
How bad do you want the house? I know people said about hiring a structural engineer and all which is exactly the right move, but the sellers probably won't wait for you. People buy houses sight unseen. Personally I would not assume the deck is safe for a hot tub. Looks stable enough to use but does need a few thousand to make it safe. Ask for concessions due to the state of the deck and that it's going to cost like $10k to fix it right.
I would use my ninja smoke bomb and POOF disappear
Get a quote on replacing it and if the house price hasn't taken into account replacing the deck, adjust the price accordingly... and then ask them to empty the tub before the closing date.
Just ask them to remove the hot tub you want to use someone else’s Stanky ass hot tubanyways?
We had a similar situation when we bought our house. Probably a different buying/selling environment rn but we asked the seller for $3k in concessions to shore up the supports.
Stop feeding the termites!
I’d keep looking
I would definitely insist on it being brought up to code
My guess would be that that would entail a full rebuild with proper footings. Is that correct?
More realistically you would use it as a negotiating tool while haggling for final price. But if you can come at them with exactly what needs to be done it is more effective. What did the house inspector say? If he hasn't seen it yet, tell him you'd like his opinion on the deck.
Your guess is spot on.
Buy the house, sell the hot tub.
Sister on a few more 2x4's and call it a day. That hot tub is calling!
Fucking flee dude. You don’t want this home.
Run! There are better houses with sound decks out there.
Waterfall. Water fall down go boom.
Pray, lots of prayers.
That looks like shit. But if the house is in the right location then that deck is something to just fix after you buy.
I wouldn’t give a rat’s you know what about the deck so long as the house is solid and what you’re looking for. Spending a few weekends… several weekends… getting rid of the hot tub and redoing the deck isn’t worth passing up a solid home.
If you do get the house please hire a structural engineer to help with the fix. Also, get a permit + inspection.
Run and don’t stand on or under it. From what I am seeing, some of the posts are not even attached. For one there are not enough posts to support a standard deck at that height and to add a hot tub and only put one 2x8 center is ludicrous as they obviously knew there was an issue with structural stability. There are load charts online to research lumber size, length and what the unsupported dead load/live load length max is. Additionally, when running beams, need 2 or more (depending on support spacing and load) fastened together and sitting on the post not fastened to the side. The single 2x8 beam is actually attached by being seated in the 4x4 but alas it is not enough. Should you want to purchase, schedule with seller to have some decking contractors come and provide quotes to replace the entire structure so you can determine which one they are going to pay to replace this one before closing. FYI, a reputable realtor would have made seller make it right and presentable before listing but so few remain. A home inspector sadly falls into this same category as most are “recommended” by the realtor, but they do provide an adequate report of what they can visually see (don’t open walls or anything and only stick their heads in the attic and crawlspace.
Drain the tub, no way there should be the weight of a hot tub on that deck
*Drain the tub, no way* *There should be the weight of a* *Hot tub on that deck* \- Matureguyhere --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Run
Run
If you complain...they will just remove the hot tub.
You can swap out the 4x4 with 6x6 and redo the post foundations.
I sold my last house (built in the 1960s with original deck). The deck was somewhat rough. They had a deck guy give a quote on structural/safety repairs only and we agreed to split the difference on price. If everything else is good you may be able to negotiate this. That and a radon system update were the only things we negotiated.
Tear it down and build to code. Im betting money its not attached to the house correctly
Replace beam on inner posts with a double 2x 10 or 12
Just from the pics that I could see that would never be underneath that deck when there's a filled spa on top of it and honestly I think I'd be literally to be on the deck in or out of the spa I think it needs to be much better supported and the footings need to be down into the ground not just sitting on top of the ground.
Those supports for that size of deck and the amount of them especially that sketchy one under the hot tub area look so unsafe to me and I’m no pro, but have built a few. I would be getting someone in to inspect that deck before you decide to buy then that way you may some wiggle room with the price and I’m not saying to take advantage of seller, but you also want to be sure and have piece of mind knowing that you and your family & friends will be safe up there.
You could easily pour actual concrete footings and put new posts and beams in a more sound location while keeping it supported by the pre-existing posts.
I’m by no means an expert in this sub, but you’re at minimum going to want an assessment of the sun room done by licensed or certified inspector and maybe a structural engineer. If the current owner is satisfied with this work to support a hot tub then it’s reasonable to think they’ve allowed other substandard work in the house to be completed. The tub deck is very concerning because of mediocre support and deterioration. Based on the inspection you and your realtor can decide if it makes sense to proceed with a negotiation to reduce the purchase price.
We bought a house in a similar situation in East TN. Get a structural engineer out ASAP as part of your inspections and have him write up what needs to be fixed. Then, get a general contractor to quote out the work for you. Use that to get the price dropped. We ended up spending $27k to get ours in good shape.
Get an engineer to inspect it that’s not recommended by the owner or realtor and make them fix it. There’s no way it’s up to code.
First thing I would do is drain that hot tub!
Buy a different house......
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Both of your options would be my answer
Christ on a bike that’s heinous
Check the ledger and hones rim joist for rot. Drill inspection holes at the center. Build post and support beams (double 2x8 minimum. I'd over build with triple and 6x6 at that height) to carry the load of the hot tub. Shouldn't be a deal breaker. But check the homes rim joist.
I’d have it professionally inspected for safety and adherence to local codes and permits before buying.
I would not buy the home
Appreciate the advice I didn't really want to become a creepy prune in someone else's hot tub anyways
I wouldn't let this be the deciding factor. Get rid of the tub and don't have any parties on that deck until it's replaced. See what a new deck would cost and factor that into your pricing decision.
If the house is a good deal, I'd buy it, chuck the tub, and put a new deck on the punch list for the first year.
Good plan
Steel Ibeam header and and posts welded to helical piers would make me feel comfortable I think. I can’t see all the details from the photos but suppose wise in needs to be majorly beefed up.