Water Damaged Wood Post Base

This is what the damaged wood post looked like after the wood trim base was removed. This was the only post that was damaged out of a total of four and it was also the only wood post that the sprinklers were spraying on.

If you look at the picture below, it's hard to imagine that this wood post was actually holding up a large section of the second story deck.

Home Repair Tip: Whenever you're replacing a damaged wood post, the first thing that you're going to need to do, is to provide enough structural support under the beam that the damaged post is supporting, before anything else.

As you can see there's not much left of the bottom of this particular post. This is a good example of what a small amount of water can do to wood over a long period of time.

I would also like to point out that there weren't any termites here or above at the top of the post connection. The bottom of this post suffered from wood rot caused by trapped moisture.