Porch post repair

[emccann]

Good afternoon,

I live in Virginia.

My wife and I are fixing up and old two stry farm house.

We need to build some new porch posts that support a porch roof. They are dry rotted at the base and need to be replaced. the sit on a wood 1" floor.

The posts are 8"X8" and 8 feet tall. They were painted white.

Any suggestions as to what type of wood I should use? What tyoe fo paint I should use for exterior exposeure

 

[glennjanie]

Hello emccann, and Welcome:
I would use aluminum posts for replacement. They come in many shapes and sizes and you could forget the painting and rotting. I would want to set them with metal plates top and bottom (maybe 1/4" aluminum).
Glenn

 

[Daryl in Nanoose]

Aluminum is a great way to go but on a older farm house I would be thinking it might look a little out of place and opt for Fir, Cedar, pressure treated not to mention you can dress it up all sorts of ways to give yourself a nice pilar look. The thing is though most 6x6 or 8x8 like to crack so I personaly would go with a 6x6 and face it with 1x8. You need to address the fact that this post will just rot out again unless you get that wood off the wood so water is not accumalating causing problems and what about underneath, how does that look..

 

[inspectorD]

Some times just removing the bottom nine inches and replacing it is ok also. We have cut the bottom off and put another piece attached to the existing post and just built a cover over it to make the bottom look bigger. Like putting on a shoe . This saves the original posts if they are in OK shape and lets you put on a bottom post foot. (look for these at the lumber yard made of metal) Just another idea.......thinkin green.