What deck removal costs in Georgia
Most decks are bolted straight through the siding into the framing of the house. How that joint comes apart decides whether you finish the day with a wall to repair, which is worth settling before anybody starts pulling boards.
What it comes down to
The ledger board. That is the piece bolted through the siding into the rim joist of the house, and it turns a demolition into a careful demolition. Pry it off quickly and the flashing and a strip of siding come with it, and now there is a carpenter to call. Back the lags out and cut the board free and you get a clean line and a wall that needs new flashing and paint, nothing more. Same deck, same pile of lumber, completely different afternoon. Tell us up front whether the siding matters to you, because it shapes how we work more than anything else about the job.
What you are actually moving
Decking, joists, beams, posts, rails and stairs, nearly all of it pressure-treated, plus a ledger fixed to the house and a startling quantity of hardware. Every joist sits in a metal hanger packed with nails, and every board is fastened at each joist it crosses. That hardware is why a deck comes apart slowly even when no single piece of it is heavy. It also can't be separated back out for scrap, because it is buried in wood, so it leaves as part of the demolition load. Older decks were frequently built straight over the top of an even older one, so the boards lift and a second frame is sitting underneath. Footings are concrete, they are below grade, and they are a separate decision.
Where it ends up
Nearly all of a deck is pressure-treated lumber, and treated lumber is demolition waste rather than wood. That distinction is the whole reason a deck is not cheap to get rid of. Clean untreated wood has cheap routes open to it, mulch and chip among them, and preservative-treated timber is excluded from every one of them because of what was put into it to keep it from rotting. The same chemistry is why it must never be burned, in a brush pile or anywhere else, and why the ash from a fire like that is worse than the smoke. So a deck goes out as mixed demolition debris and it prices accordingly. There's a second thing about deck lumber worth knowing before you compare it to any other load: it's long. Joists and deck boards don't nest, they don't stack tight, and full-length material has to be cut down before it will travel at all. A deck fills far more trailer than its weight suggests, which is the opposite of most of what we haul. The footings are the exception to all of it. Concrete is clean fill, the cheapest class there is, and if the footings come out they leave on their own rather than riding out with the lumber.
Sorting is what brings the disposal half down, because separated material is handled more cheaply than a mixed trailer. On a full-service job we do that sorting. On a rental it's yours, so it's worth deciding what goes where before the first thing goes in.
The work itself
It comes apart in reverse order: rails, decking, joists, beams and posts, then the ledger. Decking is the slow stretch, because treated lumber grips a screw hard and there is a fastener at every crossing. Joist hangers get knocked out rather than pulled. A ground-level deck off a back door is straightforward work. A second-story deck over a walk-out basement means the whole thing comes down before any of it goes out, and the ground below takes the debris first. We pull nails from what is left and rake the strip where the deck stood, because that ground is always full of fasteners and it is nobody's idea of a good surprise in bare feet next summer.
What moves the number
- Square footage, and whether it is one level or stacked
- How high off the ground it sits, since anything above the first floor comes down before it goes out
- Whether the ledger comes off clean or the siding gets opened up
- Whether footings, posts and concrete come out or stay in the ground
- Whether there is an older deck frame hiding under the one you can see
- Roofs, pergolas, built-in benches and heavy railing, all of which add hardware
- Trailer access, because deck lumber is long and it does not carry far easily
Where estimates go wrong
- Treating it as one rate per square foot when the ledger, the height and the footings are what actually differ
- Assuming footings are included, when digging concrete out is a second job in a cheaper disposal class
- Booking a fast teardown and only then realizing the siding needed to survive it
- Planning to move it a pickup load at a time, when full-length joists have to be cut before they will fit in anything
Estimates are free, and you get the number before anything starts.
Questions about deck removal
Will taking the deck off damage the siding?
That depends entirely on how the ledger comes away, and it is a choice rather than an accident. Backing the fasteners out and cutting the board free leaves the wall sound behind old flashing that needed replacing anyway. Say the siding matters and we will work that way from the start.
Do the footings come out too?
Only if you want them to, and it is worth deciding before the quote. Concrete is clean fill, which is the least expensive material there is to get rid of, so the disposal end of a footing is nothing. The digging is what costs. Each one is a hole, and a deck has more of them than the top of it suggests.
Can I just burn the lumber?
No. Treated wood is not safe to burn and that goes for the ash as much as the smoke. The preservative that keeps a deck from rotting in a Georgia summer is exactly what makes a fire the wrong answer, and it is the same reason treated boards can't go into the clean wood and mulch stream that untreated lumber goes into. A deck is not brush and it never becomes brush.
Why does deck lumber fill a trailer so fast?
Length. A sixteen-foot joist takes up sixteen feet however you lay it, and boards, rails and stringers all lie awkwardly against each other instead of packing tight. It is one of the few things we haul where the trailer runs out of room long before it runs out of weight, and it is why a deck that looks like one load is often two.
Demolition
Fences, sheds, decks, barns and concrete taken down and hauled off in one go.
Want the real number for your job?
Send a photo and the town. We'll price it before anything moves.