Customer Service: (253) 677-0290
Customer Service: (253) 677-0290
By Daniel Rotaru, Owner and CEO at Decks Restore WA Contractor License # CC DECKSRL797P2
I’ve built both kinds of rooftop deck in Tacoma. A cedar one on sleepers, on a townhouse over by North 30th. A porcelain paver job on a pedestal system over a flat membrane roof, Stadium District. Same neighborhood, basically the same rain, and the same question on the front end from both homeowners. Which one actually wins on a Pacific Northwest rooftop.
This post is the answer I wish I could hand to every Tacoma homeowner who calls me asking “are there deck builders near me that do rooftops” with a flat-roof project in mind. The numbers are real, pulled from two jobs I personally walked. Not theory. Not a spec sheet copied off a manufacturer’s website.
If you only want the bottom line: on a Tacoma rooftop, porcelain pavers cost more on day one, save you a lot of money over fifteen years, and don’t punish you for the eight months a year we live under cloud. Cedar is cheaper to start, looks great in year one, and starts costing you the second the detailing slips.
The rest of this post is why I think that.
These are real jobs we finished about a year and a half apart. I’m leaving the addresses out, but the details are real.
Project A was cedar on sleepers on a townhouse rooftop in North End Tacoma. About 380 square feet of usable space over a TPO membrane. The owner wanted the natural look — he’d lived with a composite deck at his last house and didn’t love it. We used western red cedar 5/4 boards with hidden fasteners, on pressure-treated sleepers floating over the membrane with rubber pads underneath so nothing punctured the roof.
Project B was porcelain pavers on adjustable pedestals on a Stadium District rooftop. About 410 square feet over a similar TPO membrane. Same wet climate, same southwest exposure. 2 cm thick porcelain tiles in a wood-look finish, set on polypropylene pedestals that level out the roof slope without ever touching the membrane with a fastener.
Both jobs got pulled permits with the City of Tacoma. Both passed final inspection on the first walk. Both clients are still happy. The interesting part is what happened to the cedar deck in years two, three, and four.
These are the all-in numbers I billed. Labor, materials, the pedestal or sleeper system, parapet flashing, permits, the whole thing.
Project A, the cedar deck: $19,400 installed. About $51 a square foot.
Project B, the porcelain paver deck: $32,800 installed. About $80 a square foot.
So porcelain ran roughly 57% more than cedar up front. That is a real gap and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The pedestal system alone costs more than the cedar lumber for the whole job, and the porcelain tiles themselves are three or four times the price per square foot compared to cedar.
If the only number you’re looking at is the check you write on day one, cedar wins. No argument from me.
Then the rooftop part of “Tacoma rooftop” starts to matter.
The cedar deck in year one was beautiful. Honestly stunning. The client recoated it that October and it still looked great heading into winter.
In year two I got a call. April. The boards along the south parapet had cupped, and a couple were starting to check. He’d missed the spring recoat by a few months because he’d been traveling for work, and Tacoma’s wet-then-dry-then-wet cycle had done what it does. My quote to refinish: about $1,100. He ended up doing it himself for around $400 in stain and a weekend.
Year three I came back to swap three boards that had warped past the point where refinishing would save them. The hidden fasteners helped, but they don’t stop wood from doing what wood does on a hot rooftop with no airflow above it through July. That cost him about $850.
Year four was another DIY refinish. Another weekend, another four hundred bucks in product.
He’s into the cedar deck for maybe $1,650 in maintenance materials by the four-year mark, plus three weekends of his time. The deck still looks good. It doesn’t look new.
The porcelain deck over the same window? I’ve been back twice. Once because the homeowner wanted me to add a tile where she extended a planter run. Once because a windstorm shoved a patio umbrella stand into a tile and she wanted me to check it. Tile was fine.
Maintenance cost on the porcelain in four years: zero. She pressure-washes it on a low setting twice a year. That is the entire maintenance program.
Stretch the timeline out and the gap closes in a hurry.
A cedar rooftop deck in Tacoma at the 15-year mark, realistically, looks like this. Refinishes every couple of years, so seven of them. If you hire it out you’re paying about $1,100 a pop, so somewhere between $5,000 and $7,500 over 15 years. Board replacement on a sunny rooftop deck? I tell my clients to budget 15 to 25% of the boards needing swap-out across that window. On a 380 square foot deck that’s another $2,500 to $4,000. And then by year 15 you’re usually looking at full re-decking. The substructure is generally still fine, but the boards are cooked. Call that $12,000 to $15,000 if you stretch.
Add it up. Your $19,400 cedar deck has cost you somewhere between $39,000 and $46,000 by the time it’s into its second decade. Not a number anyone enjoys seeing.
Porcelain on pedestals over the same 15 years is a much shorter list. Zero in maintenance materials. A few hours a year of pressure washing. Maybe two to four tiles cracked from impact damage over the whole span — someone drops a cast iron pan, that kind of thing. Each replacement is about $40 installed because we can lift a tile out of the pedestal grid in five minutes. So $80 to $160 over 15 years. And no re-decking. The tiles are rated for 25 years plus, freeze-thaw included, outdoors.
Your $32,800 porcelain deck has cost you about $33,000 by year 15. Break-even with cedar lands somewhere around year nine or ten. After that it’s pure savings.
Set cost aside for a second. A rooftop deck in Tacoma has to do a few things a backyard deck doesn’t.
It can’t damage the roof underneath. Both pedestal pavers and a properly built sleeper system can manage this. The difference is what happens later. Pavers on pedestals pull up and reset in minutes if the roofer ever needs to access the membrane. Cedar on sleepers with hidden fasteners? I’ve helped pull one apart to get to a leak in someone else’s installation. We unscrewed thirty boards to access one corner of membrane. It is not a thing you want to do twice.
Second, it has to be safe when it’s wet. This is where cedar struggles. A wet cedar rooftop deck in February in Tacoma is a slip hazard, full stop. Composite handles wet better. Outdoor-rated porcelain with a textured finish is the best of the three by a wide margin. The pavers we install have a slip rating that meets code for wet barefoot use around pools. I wouldn’t run on a wet cedar deck. I’ve watched my own kids run on a wet porcelain rooftop and not worried about it.
And third, wind. This one surprises people. On a rooftop above the third story anywhere near Commencement Bay you’re dealing with gusts that will lift a loose board, period. Hidden fasteners on cedar over sleepers are fine if the sleepers are anchored properly to ballast or to a secure perimeter. Pedestal pavers handle this in a different way — they get heavier the more of them you put down. A single 2 cm porcelain tile in a 60×60 cm size weighs about 50 pounds. By the time you’ve laid 100 tiles you’ve got 5,000 pounds of dead weight on the membrane plus the wind-shadow effect of the parapet wall around it. In the years I’ve been installing pedestal paver rooftops in Tacoma and Gig Harbor, I have not had a single tile lift.
When somebody calls Decks Restore for a rooftop deck in Tacoma, the conversation usually opens with budget. Fair. My follow-up is always the same: how long are you planning to live in this house?
If they tell me they’re flipping in two years, or selling within five, cedar can make sense. You get the warm natural look that photographs beautifully for listings, the upfront price is lower, and whoever buys the place will be the one paying for refinishes down the road. I’ve built those decks. They’re good decks. The system works for that situation.
If the answer is “we’re staying” — and on most Stadium District and North End townhouses, the people I’m talking to are staying — porcelain pavers on pedestals are the better build. The math works by year ten. The performance is better every single rainy month between now and then. And when those people eventually do sell, the listing line “rooftop deck with porcelain pavers, 25-year material warranty” reads a lot stronger than “cedar rooftop deck, refinished last fall.”
If you’re hiring this work out, and on a rooftop you absolutely should, here are the questions that separate a contractor who actually does rooftops from one who’s pretending.
For cedar: how are you isolating the sleepers from the membrane? You want to hear “rubber pads” or “sleeper protection mats,” not “we just lay them down.”
For pavers: which pedestal system, and what’s the load rating at the heights you need? Most of what I install is Buzon or Eterno. Both are good systems and both rate well over 2,000 pounds per pedestal at residential heights.
For both: how are you flashing at the parapet and at any roof penetrations? If the contractor says “we’ll figure it out on site,” that is the moment to thank them and hang up.
And for both: are you pulling a permit with the City of Tacoma? If a contractor tells you a rooftop deck in Tacoma doesn’t need one, that contractor is wrong, and the liability for that is sitting with you, not them.
I see rooftop decks in Tacoma built by general contractors who do maybe one or two of these a year. They’re usually fine through the first winter. Sometime in year three the membrane starts having a problem, and now the homeowner is paying for a roof job and a deck job at the same time. Avoid that.
Cedar if you want the warmth and the natural look, you’re comfortable maintaining wood, and the budget is what it is right now.
Porcelain pavers on pedestals if you’re staying in the house, you don’t want to think about refinishing again, and you want a deck that looks the same in year twelve as it did the day we finished it.
What matters more than either material is who builds it. I’ve seen great cedar decks outlast bad paver jobs and I’ve seen bad cedar decks fail in two winters. Hire someone who has built rooftops in this climate specifically, get their license number, and verify it before you sign anything.
If you want a real on-site estimate for a Tacoma rooftop deck, give us a call at (253) 677-0290. I personally meet with every rooftop client before we quote anything. You can read more about our Tacoma deck building services, see our work on porcelain deck paver installations, or request a free estimate and we’ll come walk the roof with you.
Before you hire any deck builder in Tacoma — us or anyone else — verify their Washington contractor license at the Washington L&I contractor verification page. Our license is CC DECKSRL797P2. Any “deck builder near me” search result that won’t hand you a license number when you ask is not the company you want putting structures on your roof.
About the author. Daniel Rotaru is the owner and CEO of Decks Restore LLC, a fully licensed, bonded, and insured deck builder serving Tacoma, Federal Way, Gig Harbor, Renton, and the surrounding Puget Sound area. He personally walks every job before quote and at final inspection. Washington Contractor License # CC DECKSRL797P2.