On Wednesday (9/18/2019) I stepped onto the first plank of the deck on my back yard catch basin and felt a crunch, as if my foot might break through.
I pulled up the boards on the south side of the catch basin so that I could raise the deck panels.
I found that these boards were seriously rotted. (They had been in contact with damp earth since I built the deck five years ago.)
Investigating further, I found that practically all of the wood was rotted and most was infested with some kind of bugs. I had used "pressure treated" wood throughout when I built the deck, but that was clearly not sufficient for this environment.
It seemed clear that I had to completely rebuild the deck. Rather disappointing, only five years after I put a lot of work into building it initially. http://rollinsturner.blogspot.com/2013/12/
The first step was to remove the old deck. I raised all four sections of the old deck, and improvised a barrier around open catch basin. One of the panels was so rotted that it broke loose when I raised it.
There was a lot of water and muck in the catch basin, below the level that the pump could remove automatically. I manually raised the float on the pump's switch in order to pump most of the water out. Then I used a shop vac to extract most of the remaining water. Finally I had to climb down into the catch basin and shovel out the remaining muck (a nasty job that I have done once every year or so.)
I broke the panels loose from the catch basin and removed all of the remaining wood.
I dragged the panels and other wood further back in the back yard in order to get them out of the way, and tidied up the catch basin.
With this, the demolition was complete, and I was ready to start building the new deck.
