Decks are under constant fire from mother nature. The sun and its powerful UV radiation age the deck like a sunburn on your neck. Moisture and rain can cause the deck to rot prematurely and result in physical danger as the deck becomes unsafe to walk on. Decks are at the will of the environment you live in and in Canada, which means six months of snow and ice warping and damaging your deck. The temperatures in Canada are chaotic and can go from warm to cold in minutes. This means your deck has to grow and shrink rapidly with the temperature and every time it does it breaks just a little bit. If you find nails sticking out it is because the wood has shrunk. The nails are all in the same place they always were the deck is just shriveling like a prune. Do you feel a strange bounding sensation when walking on the deck? That is not your imagination you are bouncing. The deck boards get weak and lose the strong fibers that make the wood hard. This is called dry rot and can appear like a greenish hue on dry wood. This type of rot does not need a lot of moisture and can eat your wood even in direct sunlight.
If your deck was built just with nails you can take a deck down entirely with just a hammer and a nail reveler. The real work is in lifting and hauling the wood to a disposal container or vehicle. Taking down a deck on your own is also very time-consuming. You will have to be a weekend warrior and depending on the size of the deck it could take months. That means you may have to stop during inclement weather and may have to tarp the whole project if you fail to complete it in the very short Canadian summer. If you want to take the deck down essentially for free then you can. It will take time, it will make the yard mostly unusable and your family and friend will suffer for it. Why not get some manpower and leave the tear down to the pros? Deck demolition can take down a large ground floor deck with inground concrete supports in one day. We have the technicians, the tools, and the hauling to get your deck down in one day. Disposal is part of the cost and that cost starts at ten dollars per square foot.
If you just want the deck gone then get out a chainsaw or a sledgehammer. Destroy it. But remember that wood may not be good for a deck but is still usable in other ways. Removing the deck properly, keeping every piece intact can get you paid. Wood is scarce and more and more governments are focused on protecting our forests. As the wood gets more expensive people are will to buy it used, even old. So take the deck apart carefully with a drill or carpenters hammer and when you go to take nails out using a steel nail revealer, it makes the process much easier and faster and keeps the wood in very good condition for recycling.