Cedar, composite, multi-level wraparounds. Built on helical piles, finished to ten years of curb appeal.
Cedar, composite, pressure-treated, ipe — we build outdoor structures for every kind of weather Ontario throws at them. We'll walk you through which decking material actually wins on your lot, then show you what a GTA deck costs line by line before you sign anything. Most of the work happens below the boards: frost-depth footings, properly spaced joists, hardware that survives twenty winters of freeze-thaw. The boards on top are the easy part.
The Petersons inherited a wraparound deck that looked fine until the first year we walked it. The handrail moved when you leaned on it. Two of the joists at the south corner were sagging an inch.
We pulled a deck board and ran a tape down to the footings — three of the original sonotubes had cracked, two had heaved with frost, and the south corner was sitting on what amounted to wet clay.
Tearing the whole deck off felt drastic until we found the footings. After that it was the only honest move. We core-sampled the soil to confirm we weren't on bedrock, and pivoted from concrete sonotubes to six helical piles driven to six feet — well below Ontario's four-foot frost line, rated together for a 90 psf snow load even though Oakville code only requires 60.
The redesign pulled the wraparound in by ten inches on the south side so we could hit a clean span without sistering joists. We modeled the new footprint in SketchUp, printed it at 1:50, and walked the new outline on their lawn with painter's tape so the Petersons could stand at the kitchen window and see what they were committing to before a single board went down.
Ten weeks from tear-off to handshake. Cedar 5/4 × 6 boards on top, hidden fastener system underneath, stainless hardware throughout. The deck doesn't move when you lean on the rail anymore.
It also doesn't look like the same deck — built-in benches now wrap the south corner, and the kitchen window finally opens onto something worth looking at.
“The first deck looked finished. This one feels finished.”
Ontario's frost line is four feet. Concrete sonotubes are supposed to sit below it. In wet clay they crack, in heave-prone soil they lift, and in twenty winters we've seen enough failed footings to stop recommending them as the default. Helical piles drive past the frost line under torque, get load-tested as they go in, and reach bearing soil every time. The cost difference — about $400 to $600 a pile — is the cheapest insurance on a deck.
Hot-dipped galvanized hardware is the spec everywhere. It's also what we replace most often when we tear a ten-year-old deck off near the lake. Salt fog and freeze-thaw eat the zinc coating from the inside out, and the first thing to go is the joist hanger nail. We spec 316 stainless on every joist hanger, hurricane tie, post base, and screw above the framing. It costs roughly 2.4× galvanized. It also outlives the deck.
Cedar decks, composite decks, pressure-treated platforms, multi-level wraparounds, raised decks with skirt panels, front porches with rail-cap details, pergolas and gazebos, custom built-in benches, deck stairs with continuous handrails — and the small jobs everyone else turns down. Replacing a row of rotten boards, re-staining a cedar deck back to its original color, swapping a single failing post. If the structural framing under the deck is the real problem, we fix that too, because the crew already on site is the crew that knows how.
Every deck we build starts in SketchUp. We model the footprint, joist layout, post locations, railing details, and stair geometry to the inch before we cut anything. The model exports to a 1:50 plan we print on poster stock and take to site, so the homeowner can stand on the lawn with painter’s tape on the grass and walk the deck before it exists.
On site, the laser distance measurer gets us to-the-millimeter measurements off the house, the joist hangers get torque-driven (not nailed), and the rail balusters get spaced with a story stick instead of a tape — every gap stays under the four-inch code regardless of where the post lands. We use a moisture meter on every cedar board before it goes down: anything over 18% gets stickered for another week.
Cedar is warmer, smells incredible, and costs less up front, but it needs a wash and re-stain every other year to hold its color. Composite costs roughly 1.6× cedar in materials but needs a soap-and-water wash once a year and lasts 25–30 years. We walk you through both with samples in the consultation. Most clients pick cedar for the texture and pay for the maintenance.
Concrete sonotubes aren't wrong — they're just unforgiving. Here's what we've learned after ten years of pulling cracked tubes out of Ontario clay and replacing them with helical piles.
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