Most of the failed decks I’ve stood under did not collapse because the homeowner got unlucky. They failed because the homeowner had a small bad feeling during the sales pitch, talked themselves out of it, and signed anyway. That’s the pattern I kept hearing when I started asking people who fix other contractors’ work for a living.
One of them is Radu Oprea, a Naperville deck builder whose phone rings a lot in spring, and not always for new decks. A good share of his calls are rescue jobs: decks two or three years old that already sag, pull away from the house, or fail an inspection the day before a home sale closes. He’s the guy who gets to tell people what went wrong, and who paid for it. So I asked him a simple question. Before any of these decks were built, what could the homeowner have noticed? His answer was a list, and none of it required knowing anything about carpentry. Here it is.
“We don’t need a permit for that”
This is the one Radu hears most, and it’s the one that should end the conversation.
In DuPage County, a deck is regulated construction, and in Naperville the city’s building permit process applies to almost any deck you’d actually stand on. A builder who waves that off isn’t doing you a favor. Usually it means he doesn’t pull permits, can’t, or doesn’t want an inspector looking at his work. All three are bad.
“The permit isn’t the obstacle,” Radu told me. “The permit is the second set of eyes. When a builder doesn’t want one, ask yourself what he doesn’t want the inspector to see.” Unpermitted decks also have a way of detonating at the worst moment, when you sell the house and a buyer’s inspector flags work that was never on record. Now you’re tearing out a deck you’ve been using for years because it was never legal in the first place.
They can’t hand you proof of insurance and registration
Ask for two things before anyone gets near your yard: a certificate of general liability insurance, and proof they’re registered to work in your municipality. A real builder produces both without flinching. A sketchy one stalls, makes excuses, or sends a blurry photo of an expired policy.
This isn’t optional in Illinois. The state’s Home Repair and Remodeling Act requires contractors doing residential work to carry public liability and property damage coverage, with minimums spelled out in the statute, unless they meet a high net-worth exemption. If a crew member gets hurt in your yard or puts a saw through your gas line and the contractor isn’t insured, that exposure can land on you. The Illinois Attorney General lays this out plainly in its consumer rights guidance for home repair, and it’s worth reading before you hire anyone.
There’s no written contract, or they’re rushing you to sign
In Illinois, any home repair or remodeling job over $1,000 legally requires a written contract, and the contractor has to give you the “Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights” brochure before you sign. The contract is supposed to spell out the total cost, the materials, the company’s real name and address, and the start and finish dates. If a deck builder wants a handshake and a cash deposit, he’s skipping a law that exists specifically to protect you.
Watch the pressure, too. “Sign today and I’ll knock off a thousand” is a sales tactic, not a deal. So is a large cash deposit up front before any materials are ordered. And if you sign at your kitchen table, you have three business days to cancel under Illinois law, which is exactly the kind of thing the contractor who’s rushing you is hoping you don’t know.
The bid is dramatically lower than everyone else’s
Get three bids and one of them comes in at half the others. People want to believe they found a bargain. Radu sees it differently. “When a number is that low, something’s missing from it, and it’s usually under the ground or behind the siding,” he said.
The cheap bid almost always gets cheap by skipping the parts you can’t see. Shallow footings that don’t reach Naperville’s 42-inch frost depth. A ledger lag-bolted with too few fasteners, or no flashing behind it. No lateral-load connection. Interior screws that rust out in two winters. You don’t save that money. You defer it, with interest, to the day the deck has to be partly torn apart and redone. The lowest bid and the most expensive deck are frequently the same deck.
They get vague when you ask how it attaches to the house
You don’t need to be a builder to run this test. Ask the person quoting your deck how it connects to your house, how deep the footings go, and what keeps the deck from pulling away under a crowd. You’re not checking whether you understand the answer. You’re checking whether they have one.
A builder who knows what he’s doing will talk easily about the ledger connection, flashing, footing depth, and lateral ties. A builder who’s going to cost you will get fuzzy, change the subject, or tell you not to worry about it. The ledger is where most deck collapses start, so “don’t worry about it” is the wrong answer to the most important question you can ask.
You can’t verify a single thing they’ve built
Anyone can say they’ve built a hundred decks. Ask to see three, ideally ones a few years old so you can see how the work aged, and ask for the addresses or photos and a couple of past clients you can actually call. A builder with a real track record is glad to show it off. Vague references, a phone full of stock photos, or reviews that all appeared in the same week should all give you pause.
This is also where trade-group membership and certification earn their keep. They aren’t a guarantee, but a builder who has bothered to get certified and carries a code of ethics has at least shown up to be held to a standard, which is more than the truck that appeared in your neighborhood after the last storm can say.
They want the permit pulled in your name
This is the subtle one, and it catches smart people. Some contractors will push you to pull the permit yourself, as the homeowner, instead of pulling it under their own license or registration. It sounds like a small favor. It isn’t.
When the permit is in your name, you become the responsible party for the work in the eyes of the city. If it fails inspection or violates code, that’s on you, not the crew that built it. A legitimate builder pulls the permit as the contractor and stands behind the work. Anyone trying to slide that responsibility onto you is telling you how much they plan to stand behind anything.
The thread running through all of it
None of these red flags require a tape measure or a code book. They’re about whether someone is willing to be accountable, on paper, to an inspector, and to you. The decks Radu gets paid to rip out and rebuild were almost never wrecked by bad luck. They were built by someone who didn’t want a permit, didn’t put it in writing, and didn’t want anyone checking the work, and a homeowner who noticed at least one of those things and hired them anyway.
The fix is unglamorous. Get three real bids. Read the contract. Confirm the permit, the insurance, and the registration before a single board gets delivered. Ask the boring questions and watch how the answers come back. The good builders make this easy, because being checked doesn’t bother them. That, more than anything, is the signal worth trusting.
The author writes about residential construction and home improvement in the Chicago suburbs. This article is general consumer information, not legal advice; for questions about your rights under Illinois law, consult an attorney or the Illinois Attorney General’s office. Permit details reflect Naperville’s adoption of the 2024 ICC codes effective April 1, 2026; confirm current requirements with your municipality before starting work.