Deck Installation in Edmonds

From the ferry terminal at the foot of Main Street, Edmonds' hillside addresses look straight out over Puget Sound. Those grade changes mean drainage planning matters before the first post goes in. Thirty-seven inches of annual rain will work its way under an improperly flashed ledger board within two or three seasons. Composite decking from Trex or TimberTech handles the moisture and moss cycle better than cedar in the 98020 zip code. Cedar starts graying and checking by year three — north-facing surfaces are already collecting moss by year two. Composite costs more at install, but you're not sanding and sealing every spring or replacing boards at the eight-year mark. For Edmonds hillside lots with sightlines over the Sound, that long-term math tends to be easy. Drainage planning is deck planning here.

Most of the residential stock near Sunset Avenue North and the Edmonds Bowl was built between 1960 and 1985 — ranchers and split-levels with rim joists that were never designed with ledger attachment in mind. Blocking needs to be added between existing joists before a ledger can be properly fastened and flashed. Skip that step and you're replacing framing, not just decking. On split-levels near Beach Street and Caspers, that framing review runs before any permit submittal. Grade is the defining variable on most Edmonds hillside lots. The Meadowdale neighborhood — 98026 addresses west of 76th Avenue West along the Puget Sound bluff — has rear yards that drop 6 to 14 feet across a single lot depth. Post heights on those hillside decks regularly hit 8 to 10 feet, which changes the footing layout, beam sizing, and puts you past the 30-inch IRC guardrail threshold before you've chosen a decking material. Perrinville addresses north of 196th Street show the same grade conditions. Early 1970s construction throughout this stretch often has galvanized joist hanger hardware that's corroded past reliable load transfer — that gets caught on the site walk before permits are pulled, not after the rough-in inspector shows up. City of Edmonds runs its own permit center for addresses inside city limits. Snohomish County PDS handles unincorporated parcels nearby — different jurisdiction, different plan review queue. Knowing which counter your address falls under saves two to three weeks at the start of a project. Homes on the hillside above the BNSF rail line often have significant grade changes at the rear yard. That affects footing layout, post height, and whether the deck triggers the 30-inch guardrail threshold under IRC. It usually does.