Rotten posts, beams and framing, made solid again

Often, yes. We cut out the rotten section, support the structure and replace it with sound wood, with reinforcement where needed. If a member is too far gone, we tell you why.

The sill plate, the bottom-most piece of framing lumber sitting directly on top of the foundation, is the single most common structural rot location in a Vancouver home, and it fails for a specific reason: it's wood in direct, permanent contact with concrete, and concrete wicks ground moisture upward into whatever sits on it. Add poor grading that slopes water toward the foundation instead of away from it, a missing or failed sill gasket, or a crawl space with inadequate ventilation, and the sill plate stays damp far longer than any other framing member in the house. Beams and joists fail for a related but distinct reason: sustained water intrusion from above, a failed deck ledger connection, a roof leak that's been dripping onto framing for months before anyone traces it, or a plumbing leak inside a wall cavity, reaching wood that was never designed to get wet at all.

Structural wood rot is not the same category of problem as rot in a fascia board or a window sill, and we don't treat it that way. This is load-bearing wood, the material actually holding the structure up, and getting the repair-or-replace call wrong here has consequences a cosmetic repair doesn't. Our process starts with an actual moisture-meter reading at every suspect location, not a visual estimate, because structural framing can look intact on the surface while the wood underneath has already lost most of its load-bearing capacity. When a finding is severe enough to raise a structural question, that's a conversation we have with you directly and in writing, and when a project needs an engineer's sign-off, whether that's your own building envelope engineer on a strata project or one we bring in, we coordinate with them rather than working around them.

Early-stage sill plate or framing rot, where the wood is softened but the fibre structure is largely intact, is usually a candidate for epoxy consolidation: the affected section is opened up, treated with a penetrating epoxy consolidant, and rebuilt with an epoxy filler that ends up harder than the surrounding original wood. Once decay has progressed further, the honest answer is a wood splice, cutting out the compromised section entirely and scarfing in new, properly treated lumber tied into sound framing on either side, sized and fastened to match the load path of the original member. We document which one applies to your specific finding, and why, before any repair work starts, not after.

No, the foundation itself and the wood sitting on top of it are two different systems. Sill plate rot is a framing repair, not a foundation repair, though the two are easy to confuse when you're staring at a soft spot where wood meets concrete.

A moisture-meter reading combined with a physical probe test tells us how far decay has progressed. Surface softness alone isn't enough information, we check depth and the actual percentage moisture content before recommending either option.

Not reliably. Structural rot at a sill plate or in a joist bay is frequently hidden behind finished walls, siding, or insulation, which is exactly why a documented 20-point inspection with a moisture meter finds things a routine visual walkthrough misses.

Yes, every structural repair we complete carries the same 2-year craftsmanship guarantee as every other job, backed by $2,000,000 in liability coverage.