The $6,000 Mistake: Why Burying Wood in Concrete is a Death Sentence for Your Stairs

The Dilemma

A homeowner recently asked:

I paid $6k to replace a sinking brick porch with wooden stairs, but the contractor buried the bottom of the wood in wet cement and the finish looks sloppy. Is this acceptable craftsmanship?

The GardenOwl Diagnosis

You had a sinking brick porch—a classic sign of bad drainage or poor soil compaction. You hired a pro to fix it, and they suggested a pivot: tear down the heavy masonry and replace it with a lighter wooden deck structure. On paper, this is a sound strategy, but by shoving the wooden stringers directly into a messy puddle of wet concrete, your contractor has led you straight into The Capillary Wick Trap. This 'Ostrich Method' of anchoring—burying the problem in the ground and hoping nobody notices—is a ticking time bomb because wood is essentially a bundle of cellulose straws placed in a permanent cup of water that can never dry out.

The Assessment

You had a sinking brick porch—a classic sign of bad drainage or poor soil compaction. You hired a pro to fix it, and they suggested a pivot: tear down the heavy masonry and replace it with a lighter wooden deck structure. On paper, this is a sound strategy. It reduces the load on the soil and is generally cheaper than re-masoning a massive stoop.

But then you get to the finish line. You look down at the bottom step, and instead of a clean transition, you see the wooden stringer (the zigzag board holding the steps up) shoved directly into a messy puddle of wet concrete. The contractor calls it "anchoring." I call it a ticking time bomb.

The Trap: The "Ostrich Method" of Anchoring

This is what I call the "Ostrich Method"—burying the problem in the ground and hoping nobody notices until the warranty expires.

Here is the physics of why this fails: Wood is a bundle of cellulose straws. When you encase the end grain of lumber in concrete—especially that sloppy, high-moisture slurry seen in the photo—you are essentially placing those straws in a permanent cup of water.

Contractors will argue, "But it's Pressure Treated (PT) lumber! It's rated for ground contact!"

I don't care what the stamp on the wood says. Pressure treatment slows down rot; it doesn't make wood invincible. When wood is encased in concrete, it cannot dry out. It stays perpetually damp, expanding and contracting differently than the rigid concrete around it. This creates a gap where water collects, freezes, and eventually rots the structural integrity of your entire staircase.

Furthermore, leaving the UPC barcode stickers on the cut ends of the lumber is pure laziness. It traps moisture against the wood and screams "amateur hour." If they didn't care enough to peel a sticker, they didn't care enough to check the grade of that concrete pour.

The Solution: Elevate and Isolate

If you want a deck to last 20 years instead of 3, you have to respect the material. Wood needs to breathe. Here is how this landing should have been executed.

1. The Landing Pad

Instead of that amorphous blob of cement, there should be a defined, troweled concrete landing pad or a compacted gravel base with pavers. This pad needs to be level and graded slightly away from the house to shed water.

2. The Hardware Gap

The most critical rule in outdoor carpentry is Wood + Concrete = Rot.

To fix this, we use a galvanized metal post base or a specialized stair stringer bracket. These brackets act as a "shoe" for the wood. They bolt into the concrete, but crucially, they hold the wood about 1 inch off the concrete surface. This creates an air gap.

When it rains, the water flows over the concrete and under the wood. The wood gets wet, but because it has airflow on all sides, it dries out quickly. No wicking. No rot.

3. The Finish Details

See those gaps between the tread and the riser? That's what happens when you rush the layout. In a proper build, we scribe the skirts to match the terrain or, better yet, level the terrain to match the architecture. And for the love of the trade, peel the stickers off before you install the board.

Visualizing the Result

This is where a tool like GardenDream becomes a safety net. Before a single bag of concrete is mixed, you can upload a photo of your site to see how a proper landing should look. It helps you identify constraints—like where the water will flow or how the stairs will meet the grade—so you don't end up with a "mud fix" at the bottom of your expensive new stairs.

It acts as a diagnostic layer, highlighting where hardscape (concrete/pavers) should end and where carpentry should begin. If you want to spot hidden opportunities (or potential failures) in your own yard, upload a photo to get an instant diagnosis and visualize the transformation using our Exterior Design App.