Outdoor Floor System®

Matt Wise
Redwood City, California, USA

Project Details

Location
Redwood City, California, USA

DexSystems® structural Outdoor Floor System® used with 1" Travertine natural stone for more durable rooftop terrace.

In 2007 my wife and I did a complete remodel of our home in Redwood City, California. During the design of the home, we built an outdoor patio on the roof above our living room. The roof is a 12'x24' deck with a 3.5 ft high stucco wall on one side, house on two other sides, and finally an open-railing overlooking our back yard on the drainage side. Although the structural design of the deck was done by our engineer, no specific design was mandated for the waterproofing of the ceiling and drainage of the roof.

Our contractor decided to go with a "traditional" deck-mud solution. A pitched plywood-base was installed on the existing flat structural beams. On top of the plywood was a 3/4" thick bed of deck-mud (very dry mortar base basically). A "waterproof membrane" was painted onto the deck-mud, before the actual ceramic tiles were installed. On the drainage edge of the wall, a galvanized steel capping was placed, intending to redirect water into a gutter.

After less than 2 years we noticed cracked tiles on our deck, discoloration in the grout, and symptoms indicating water was actually penetrating our wall rather than draining properly into the gutter.

In mid-2011 we decided that we needed to solve the problem before it got significantly worse. We started by tearing off the deck, and thats when we saw how bad the damage really was. The galvanized steel water drip edge was completely rusted through, the waterproof membrane was discolored and had failed. Water had penetrated through the membrane, through the deck mud and into the plywood sloped deck surface.

On top of the new roof, we laid down the Gratedex® underlayment panels on top of the Ped-Tite® spacer-connector 'pucks.' It took 1-2 hours to lay out the grid, and only a few more hours to properly level all of the pucks and grids. Leveling was done with spare pieces of roofing material, a 48" level, and a bit of patience. From our experience, I recommend first laying out all the panels, then coming back the next day to do the leveling; things had settled just slightly, I was in less of a rush and able to get it done properly. By the time we were done, the panels looked pretty flat!

Since our deck was designed to support a hot tub (and we know we are going to install one in the coming weeks), we spent some time with the DexSystems® guys on the phone to determine how many additional 'pucks' would be required to support a hot tub on the Gratedex® underlayment panels. We then, for peace of mind, added 50% more Ped-Tite®. We added these only in the area where the hot tub would be sitting, and we made sure that they were positioned directly over the floor joist.

Once the DexSystems® solution was installed and leveled, we used 1" travertine pavers to finish off the deck. We used two layers of commercial-grade construction fabric for extra noise reduction (since we had previously had noise issues in our living room when people were on the deck) on the entire surface. DexSystems® Hold-Tite® TA adhesive adhesive was used only on the open-face of the deck facing our back yard.

DexSystems was the former entity name for ODF Inc. Early production GRATEDEX® panels were 48”x48”.

Project Resource Files

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