The Case of the Bleeding Patio Deck
It was one of those mornings when the coffee tasted like it had been brewed through a pair of dirty socks, and the newspaper was only good for wrapping fish. I had just settled into my creaky office chair, feet on the desk, hat tipped low, when the phone rang. Not the cell phone—the real one. The one with the cord that curls like a rattlesnake waiting to strike. Trouble always calls on that one.
“Stone Detective,” I growled into the receiver, voice rougher than a 60-grit diamond pad.
The voice on the other end had that desperate edge—like someone who just realized their backyard paradise had turned into a crime scene. “It’s my deck… It’s bleeding.”
Now, I’ve heard a lot in my line of work. Cracked travertine that sounded like a gunshot in the middle of the night. Tile floors that mysteriously turned into slip-and-slides. But a bleeding deck? That was a new one.
I grabbed my bag of tricks, my coat, and my magnifying loupe—never leave home without it. The place was a swanky modern pad perched up on a hill like it thought it was better than the rest of us. But one look at the wall below the deck told me it had secrets. Ugly ones.
White streaks ran down the stucco like tears on a statue. Not paint. Not bird leftovers. Calcium deposits. Efflorescence. The kind that only shows up when water’s got nowhere else to go.
“See?” the homeowner said, wringing his hands like he was polishing an invisible bowling ball. “It just keeps coming back, no matter how much I clean it.”
I knelt down, tapped the stone, and gave the edge of the deck a once-over. The slab was sealed up tighter than a mob boss’s alibi. Not a single scupper, weep hole, or proper drain in sight. It was as flat as a pancake at a truck stop diner, and just as greasy—sealed with some cheap topical coating that only made things worse.
The culprit wasn’t hiding. It was the deck itself. Water had been pooling every time it rained, soaking into the stone like whiskey into a bar mat. And with nowhere to drain, it was pushing salts out through the surface and down the sidewalls like a scene from a horror flick.
“There’s your problem,” I said, pointing with the tip of my cigar. “Your deck’s holding water like a grudge, and it’s leaching calcium out like it’s trying to write a confession in chalk.”
He looked at me like I’d just told him his yacht sank.
“Can it be fixed?”
“Sure,” I said, pulling out a pad and scribbling down some notes. “But it’s gonna take more than a mop and a prayer. You need drainage—proper slope, scuppers, maybe even a trench drain if you’re feeling fancy. Then we strip that coating, let it breathe, and stop sealing it up like grandma’s Tupperware.”
He nodded, but I could tell he didn’t like hearing it. People never do. They want quick fixes and miracle sealers. What they get is the truth—and sometimes that stains worse than the calcium.
I took one last look at the bleeding wall before heading back to the office. Another case closed. Another poor stone deck crying out for help in a world full of bad installs and worse decisions.
But that’s why I’m here.
I’m the Stone Detective.
