Case Study · SB 721 · CSLB #1060736
Community-Wide Elevated Deck Replacement — San Ramon
Every elevated deck across a hillside townhome community rebuilt to a single spec in one managed program — new posts, beams and decking, one warranty across the property, and residents kept in place throughout.
Deck ConstructionProject facts
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
- Service
- Deck Installation
- Property
- Hillside townhome community, attached two-story units
- Elevated elements
- 28 elevated decks — one per unit
- Client
- Property owner / management company
- Scope
- Full tear-off & rebuild across all decks: posts, beams, joists, decking, railings
- Timeline
- 9 weeks · staggered, building by building
- Completed
- Q3 2026
- Budget range
- $340k–$420k
01 The situation
The challenge
The decks had all been built together and had all reached the end of their service life together. The walking surfaces had gone gray and started to split and cup, and underneath the story was worse: at the post-to-beam connections carrying each deck out over the slope, the timber had rotted and the galvanized brackets were corroding, with posts checking and splitting where they met the beams. On a hillside, those connections are the whole load path.
The community had been quoted deck-by-deck, the way most contractors bid it — one unit, then the next, spread across a year or more. For a community this size that meant rolling disruption, mismatched details as crews and materials changed, and a warranty patchwork with a different start date on every deck. What the community actually needed was the whole set of decks brought into SB 721 compliance on one schedule, at a predictable cost, without emptying the buildings to do it.
02 Execution
What we did
We ran it as one program instead of a stack of separate repairs:
Surveyed and rated every deck across the community and set a single rebuild spec, so every unit gets the same framing, hardware and railing detail
Staggered the work building by building and staged lumber on site, so no resident lost deck access for more than a few days and crews moved straight from one unit to the next
Tore off the old decking and failed framing, then replaced posts, beams and joists with new pressure-treated lumber and new galvanized connectors at every post-to-beam and post-to-footing joint
Installed new decking and code-height railings to the same detail across all units, then sealed the surfaces and walked each deck before it went back into use
03 Outcome
The result
Every deck came back new from the footings up, built to one detail so the community reads as one project rather than a decade of patch repairs. The whole set cleared SB 721 together, the property carries a single warranty with one start date instead of twenty-eight, and the cost was fixed and known going in. Because the work was staggered, no resident was relocated and each unit was without its deck for only a few days.
Results at a glance
- All 28 community decks rebuilt to one spec in a single program
- New posts, beams, joists and galvanized connectors throughout
- Whole community cleared SB 721 on one schedule
- One warranty and one predictable cost across the property
What the client received
- Community-wide SB 721 compliance on a single schedule
- One rebuild spec and one workmanship warranty across all decks
- Photo record of the framing conditions found under every deck
- Staggered phasing that kept every resident in place
Transformation
Before & After
Deck surface
Substructure — post-to-beam
On site
Project Photos
“Every other bid was one deck at a time. Doing the whole community at once gave us one price, one warranty, and it was over in weeks instead of dragging out all year.”
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