Repairs & Maintenance

Before any repair work is proposed, we assess what is actually failing and why. A leaning fence post, a soft deck board, a gate that will not close — each of these has a specific cause, and treating the symptom without understanding the cause produces repairs that fail again. We probe, load-test, and inspect before any scope is written.

Repair vs. replace is a question we answer directly, with the structure in front of us. The honest answer is sometimes repair, sometimes replacement, and sometimes a hybrid — new posts with existing boards, for example, when the framing has failed but the surface material is still sound. We explain the tradeoffs and let you decide.

Every fence and deck repair we perform is documented and, where required by the scope, permitted. Storm damage repairs, in particular, often require a permit when structural elements are involved. We handle that process.

The San Francisco Peninsula has one of the most demanding outdoor climates for wood structures in California. It is not the rain alone — Southern California gets far more rain in a wet year. What damages Peninsula fences and decks is the combination: marine layer fog that deposits moisture on wood surfaces nearly every morning from May through October, clay soils that hold water at post depth long after the rain stops, salt air from the Bay and the Pacific that accelerates the breakdown of wood cells and corrodes unprotected metal hardware, and the temperature cycling between cool foggy mornings and warm dry afternoons that causes wood to expand and contract repeatedly. Wood posts set in concrete in this environment — in direct contact with saturated clay soil with no drainage break — are on a clock. The question is not whether they will rot, but when.

The failure pattern is consistent and predictable: rot begins at the ground line where the post exits the concrete, where moisture concentrates and the below-grade anaerobic environment transitions to the above-grade aerobic one. It works upward invisibly inside the post while the above-grade section looks and feels sound. By the time the fence moves, the rot has often traveled 12 to 18 inches above grade. A post that looked fine last year was already compromised. We probe existing posts at grade on every assessment walk and tell you what we find. A fence with three visibly moving posts almost always has two or three more that are 60 to 70 percent deteriorated and will move within one to two wet seasons.

The permanent solution for recurring ground-contact rot is eliminating wood-to-soil contact entirely. The Postmaster steel post system — a heavy-gauge galvanized steel tube set in concrete — takes the structural load of the fence and never touches the soil at the post-to-concrete interface where rot begins. The wood fence boards and rails attach to the steel post with concealed hardware, so the finished fence looks identical to a conventional wood fence from any angle. We have been specifying Postmaster conversions on Peninsula properties for decades. The cost difference over a conventional wood post reset is recovered the first time you would have needed another replacement cycle. For deck posts where structural loads are higher, we specify treated timber or steel column systems appropriate to the span and load.

On the Peninsula, untreated wood surfaces face a specific set of adversaries: morning fog that deposits moisture daily, salt air that breaks down wood cell structure and accelerates surface checking, afternoon UV exposure that degrades surface fibers and drives off natural oils, and winter rain that drives moisture into any crack or check that has opened since the last application. Left untreated, a Con-Heart redwood deck will begin checking within one to two seasons, gray to a silver patina within three to five, and develop significant surface checks — water entry points — within five to seven years. That same deck, properly sealed at installation and maintained on the right schedule, can look and perform well at fifteen years and beyond. The difference is not the wood — it is the finish program.

The most important principle in wood preservation is timing. A sealer applied to a sound, clean wood surface penetrates deeply and bonds to the wood fibers. A sealer applied to a surface that has already opened up, checked, and begun to gray bonds shallowly and performs poorly — it sits on a compromised surface rather than penetrating into a sound one. This is why we recommend the first application within six months to one year of installation on new redwood, before the surface has had a chance to open. For existing structures, the question is whether the wood is still a candidate for sealing or whether it has deteriorated to the point where staining will not meaningfully extend its life. We assess that honestly — if a deck is at year twelve with significant structural checking and soft surface fibers, we will tell you that a sealer is a cosmetic improvement rather than a preservation measure, and that a surface replacement evaluation is the more useful conversation.

For decks and fences in the five to ten year range that have been maintained — or even those that have been neglected for a season or two but are structurally sound — a professional cleaning and sealing program can meaningfully extend service life. We use high-solids penetrating oil stains and sealers that are appropriate for the Peninsula’s combination of moisture and UV exposure. These are not hardware store sealers — they penetrate deeper, bond more durably, and maintain their barrier properties significantly longer in coastal conditions. The prep work matters as much as the product: proper cleaning to remove oxidation, mildew, and salt residue before application is what allows the sealer to penetrate rather than sit on the surface. A sealer applied over a dirty or oxidized surface is performing at a fraction of its capacity regardless of the product quality.