Deck Installation
New decks laid out for the span, the soil and the snow load your lot actually has.
What this involves →Serving Reno and 25 nearby areas
Deck builder in Reno, NV
Decks for Reno homes from the 1920s bungalows of the Old Southwest to the 2000s subdivisions south of the river — four housing eras, four sets of problems.
No obligation. Every estimate starts with a walkthrough of the site and a straight conversation about what the ground, the span and the budget will allow.
City of Reno reviewonenv.us permits
Building here
Reno is four different deck jobs wearing one city name
Reno is not a single market for this work, because its housing was built in distinct waves and each wave presents differently once you get underneath a deck. Knowing which one you are standing on tells us most of what we need before we open a tape measure.
The oldest stock — the Old Southwest, Newlands, the streets around the university — is pre-war and small-lotted, often with alley access at the rear and, crucially, mature trees. Big trees are lovely and they complicate decks: root plates sit exactly where footings want to go, canopy keeps a deck permanently damp on its north side, and a shaded timber deck holds moisture and grows algae in a way a sunny one never does. These lots are also tight, so setbacks bind early and a deck frequently ends up smaller than the owner first imagined.
The post-war and 1960s ranch belt across central and eastern Reno is the opposite: generous lots, single storey, and very often a concrete patio already poured off the back. Building over an existing slab is one of the most common requests we get in these neighbourhoods, and the answer is nearly always that the deck posts need footings through or beside the slab rather than bearing on it, because a patio slab was never poured to carry point loads.
Then the 1990s and 2000s subdivisions, mostly to the south and northwest, where the constraint is rarely the ground and usually the paperwork — compact lots, tight side setbacks and, on many streets, an HOA architectural committee with a view on materials and colour. Wherever your house sits in that sequence, permits run through City of Reno Development Services and are filed on the regional ONE portal at onenv.us.
What shapes a deck project in Reno
Reno covers a lot of ground and a lot of decades. These three come up on almost every job inside the city.
Which era your house is
A 1930s bungalow, a 1960s ranch and a 2004 tract home present completely different deck problems — tree roots and tight setbacks, an existing slab and a generous yard, or an HOA palette and a five-foot side yard. We read the house before we design the deck.
Whether the ledger has been leaking
Reno has decades of decks added by previous owners, plenty of them unpermitted and a fair number nailed rather than bolted to the house. The damage is inside the rim joist and invisible from above. On any existing deck, that connection is the first thing we open up.
City limits versus county
Reno’s boundary is not tidy. Several neighbourhoods that everyone calls Reno sit partly in unincorporated Washoe County, which means a different building department, different fees and a different inspection queue. We check the parcel record rather than the address.
What we build in Reno
Deck services available here
The same six services, applied to what this ground and this elevation actually present.
Deck Repair
Rot, loose ledgers, split boards and failing rails put right before they turn into a rebuild.
What this involves →
Deck Replacement
Tearing out a deck that has reached the end of its life and rebuilding on sound footings.
What this involves →
Composite Deck Installation
Capped composite and PVC boards for owners who would rather not re-stain every other summer.
What this involves →
Wood Deck Construction
Cedar, redwood and pressure-treated pine built to move with Nevada temperature swings.
What this involves →
Deck Railing Installation
Guardrails, cable and metal infill that meet code height and open-space limits.
What this involves →Before you start
Local conditions worth checking on your lot
Not a code list. These are the things that most often change a design or a price in Reno.
- Mature tree root plates where footings need to go
- Existing patio slab and whether posts can bear near it
- Side and rear setbacks, which bind early on older lots
- Whether the back door is a required exit
- Rim joist condition behind any existing ledger
- Shade and drainage on north-facing decks
- HOA architectural review in newer subdivisions
- Whether the parcel is inside city limits or in the county
Permits for this area are handled by City of Reno Development Services. Building requirements, exemption thresholds and design criteria are revised periodically, so treat everything on this page as orientation and confirm the current position for your parcel before planning around it.
Reno questions
Deck questions specific to Reno
Do I need a permit for a deck in Reno?
In most cases yes. The City of Reno works from the International Residential Code exemption list, and applications go through the regional ONE portal at onenv.us, administered by Development Services.
The exemptions are narrower than people expect, and a deck serving your back door is often the required means of egress, which pulls it into permitted work even at a modest size. Confirm your specific project with Development Services rather than relying on a rule of thumb.
My deck was built by a previous owner. Is that a problem?
It is very common in Reno and it is not automatically a problem — but it does mean the structure was never inspected, so nobody has ever checked the ledger bolts, the footing depth or the joist spans. Those are exactly the things that fail.
If you are repairing it, we will look before quoting. If you are replacing it, the new deck is judged against current requirements, which is generally a good outcome even though it means the replacement will not be a like-for-like copy.
Can I build a deck over my existing concrete patio?
Usually, and it is one of the most frequent requests on Reno’s post-war ranch streets. The slab itself rarely carries the deck; posts need footings that bear on undisturbed ground, which often means coring through the slab or setting footings just outside it.
The knock-on effect is height. Building above a slab raises the finished deck surface, and once it passes 30 inches above grade you are into guardrails, which changes both the cost and the look.
Will tree roots stop me building?
Rarely stop, frequently reshape. On the older tree-lined streets the root plate of a mature tree sits where you would naturally want a footing, and cutting significant roots to place one risks the tree.
The usual answer is to shift the footing layout, span further between posts with a larger beam, or cantilever the deck edge past the root zone. All of those are ordinary carpentry; they just need deciding before the layout is fixed rather than on the day of the dig.
How does Reno’s elevation affect the deck?
Reno sits around 4,500 feet, and two things follow. Ultraviolet exposure is harsher than at sea level, so stains and finishes on a timber deck fade faster and want renewing sooner than the tin suggests. And the daily temperature swing is large, which moves boards and works fasteners loose if the deck was nailed rather than screwed and pre-drilled.
Snow load at Reno’s valley-floor elevation is modest compared with the foothills. It climbs sharply as you move up towards ArrowCreek or Galena, which is why those pages read differently from this one.
Nearby
We also build in these neighbouring areas
Conditions change quickly around here. Each of these has its own page.
See all twenty-five on the service areas page, or start from the Sparks homepage.
Next step
Building a deck in Reno?
Tell us which part of Reno you are in and roughly when the house was built. That pair alone narrows the likely problems considerably.
No obligation. Every estimate starts with a walkthrough of the site and a straight conversation about what the ground, the span and the budget will allow.