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Building a deck

Building a deck takes time and effort. Time and effort that you will enjoy for many years. I have such a deck that has stood for more than 35 years. But recently the deck has shown its age and is in need of rebuilding. This time there are new materials that will provide additional protection to the wood that I plan on using.

Strong post stringer connections

My deck is low and not much higher than the concrete pool deck it is near. So my 2×6 stringer to post connections were not very complex. I basically created box beams.

box beam – a beam built up from boards; has a hollow rectangular cross section
(Building) another name for box girder
The Free Dictionary: box beam

Box Beam Spacing

I spaced the box beams at approximately two feet apart. Way overkill but I can put the heaviest items on this deck and have no worries about weight. Virtually all flex has been removed. It feels like I am standing on concrete, I love that feeling.

All the posts are attached to the wood block on the top of the pier blocks. The stringers sandwich the posts with all the parts resting on the woodblock of the pier block. I purposely made my posts longer than needed and after attaching the stringers saw cut the tops off. I did this so that the posts and stringers would be at the same level. This way no one part is lower that could create a catch basin effect for water to collect at these connections. Cutting off the excess post is easily done using an extra wide wood blade on a reciprocating saw.

If your deck project has the deck higher than mine where the box beam will not rest on the pier blocks look at the short video below on how to properly create the beam and attach the beam to the post.

Video on how to mount stringers to Post

Make or buy your own pier blocks

My home being in California I do not have to worry about ground frost heaving. If you live in an area where you have ground freezing conditions you will need to know the depth of your frost before setting your pier blocks. Any pier block must be below the frost line to prevent frost heaving from ruining your deck. So, in this case, you would need to make or pour your piers to below the frost line.

Frost heaving (or a frost heave) is an upwards swelling of soil during freezing conditions caused by an increasing presence of ice as it grows towards the surface, upwards from the depth in the soil where freezing temperatures have penetrated into the soil (the freezing front or freezing boundary).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_heaving

Installing the pier blocks

For my new deck, I changed the design. I already had a bunch of existing pier blocks from the old deck and only needed to buy a few to make it work. So I purchased them and proceeded to install them in a new configuration of the redesigned deck. I started at the highest point of the concrete pool deck the new deck was going to overlap. As I installed each pier block I made sure that each block was level to at least two other pier blocks and that each pier block was level in both directions. A four-foot level worked well for the block to block part of the construction. A torpedo level worked well for leveling the block in both directions.

This basically ensured that I would have a level surface to build my box beams on. A shovel helped me get the pier blocks close to their final elevation. I used my shop vacuum to remove the last amounts of dirt so as not to disturb it. This made sure that each pier block was resting on compacted undisturbed soil. I used a shovel to lever the block into final horizontal positions. Once I had them in position, I poured the soil back around the pier block and compacted it around each block. I then covered it with landscape fabric and rock to prevent weed growth under the deck.

Video on making your own pier blocks

Cantilevering the outer edges of the deck

My new deck is a floating type deck. That means that it is not connected to the house in any way. The framework was very simple for a floating deck. As long as the stringers(box beams) are under the deck boards there is plenty of support. The problem is that I have concrete under two edges and I would like my deck to come out to and cover part of that concrete. That means that part of the deck will not be supported by pier blocks directly under the outer stringer/skirt board. That section of the deck will be cantilevered over the existing concrete pool deck. So I needed to come up with a method to support the deck, and the outer stringer/skirt board at these points. When it is finished it will have be rock solid was my only criteria.

Construction of a barge rafter with lookouts

Building a deck photo anatomy of a barge rafter

The Barge Rafter

I had looked at my house and had noticed that the end of the gable roof overhang is not supported but cantilevered out. The cantileverd section was over two feet. I only needed to cantilever my deck about a foot or less. I looked up this kind of construction and it is called a barge rafter. The roof sheathing(will be the deck boards in my case) and a couple of 2x4s called the “lookouts” supports the barge rafter(skirt board in my case).

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The cantilever of the roof is several feet. For my deck, the cantilever is about one foot. So I used the lookout construction technique for 3 lookouts in less than 8 feet of length. I also added a vertically placed supporting 2×4 block under each lookout to support the bottom of the skirt board from being pushed back toward the box beam.

Building the barge rafter

barge rafter construction with lookout notches

Finished barge rafter with lookout and blocking

Learning from my mistakes

I originally had the outlooks going from the first box beam to the barge rafter. This construction was not very stiff. The lookout was levering the box beam. Extending the lookouts from the first box beam to the next box beam removed any levering at the first box beam. It really stiffened everything beautifully. When it was finished(lookouts connected to both box beams) I could stand on the skirt board without decking and it was rock solid.

When I frame those, I install 2×4′ or 2×6’s outlookers every 3-4′ flat notched into the rafters flush at the top and then 2x’s on edge the width of the overhang.
Joe Carola reply to Stupid HO Question http://www.contractortalk.com/f14/stupid-ho-question-13964/

Dealing with warped wood

This became a big deal for me. Since I was reusing old deck boards warped or bowed boards were what I was facing. After some experimentation, I needed to come up with a cheap tool to help straighten these boards. This is what I came up with. I made two of them. If you need more information on how it is put together here is a link to that article.

Video on my DIY board straightener

Methods to increase longevity

Caulk

I want to give this revived deck the longest life possible. That way I will not have to work on it again. So when I was dismantling the old deck I was paying attention to the places where rot had occurred. It always came down to any place where two pieces of the frame came together wood rot would follow. The failure analysis that I was mentally performing said that this was the weakest points due to water getting between the two pieces and that something would need to be done at these points. So when I was putting the new framework together I was using a pure silicone caulk between the top half of all the joints. My logic being that if I can prevent water from entering the top of the joint it would provide a longevity insurance policy. Any water trying to enter after the top half of the joint would already be running down and have no place to collect. I used up two tubes of caulk for my 100 sq. ft. deck. Even if the caulk only extends the life of the deck a few years it is a cheap longevity insurance policy.

I also used clear acrylic caulk on the surface of the deck boards. Anywhere there was a point for water to enter, the wood needed to be sealed as best as I could. So all screw heads were driven below the wood surface and filled with the acrylic caulk. Any board with cracks had them filled with the clear acrylic caulk as well. I did this because I am going to put a solid coat of a fairly new deck coating over all these water entry points.

Flashing

This is something that I found that is new to me. Flashing made especially for decking. The flashing goes between the deck frame and the deck boards. It covers the top part of the framework and prevents water from entering the joints below. The flashing covers the entire top of the deck framing. Unfortunately, it is not available in my area. If it had been available in my area I would have certainly installed it as I feel it would be an additional protective layer to prevent water infiltration. Instead, caulk became my flashing.

Short video on use of flashing

Deck materials

I like the thought of alternatives to wood. A Plastic wood product if you will. It resists water, does not have a warping tendency, and will not dry out and crack like wood does in our hot dry valley climate. Unfortunately, my wallet tends to get in the way of such high expectations. For my little deck, an off the shelf composite deck board about 10 feet in length(6″ wide) would cost about two dollars and fifty cents a running foot. My deck needs fifteen courses of decking some of it in the twelve-foot range. It would have cost me above three hundred dollars.

Decking details

I went with douglas fir 2x6s for the deck material. I salvaged the old boards that could be reused and I bought eight new boards to complete the deck. Since I was reusing some of the old deck boards and changing the design of the deck when the deck boards went down I let the ends run wild. I used a piece of wood to mark the amount of overhang over the skirt board on several of the boards as they went down. When all the boards were down I used my chalk line to snap a line across the boards at the marks. I used a brand new saw blade on my circular saw to cut the ends at the chalk line. Since my floating deck butts up against my garage wall, the last board had to be scribed and cut to the final dimension before being attached to the deck. This leaves about an inch of gap between the deck and the stucco garage wall.

My old deck had a 1/8th gap between boards. This time I increased the gap between boards to 1/4″. I did this to help the wood dry quicker thru better air movement. Hopefully, this larger gap will increase the life of this new deck.

I used a router with a 1/4″ radius bit on the cut ends and along the scribed cut board to round over the cut edges. Where the router would not fit my orbital sander with a medium grit sandpaper finished the job.

Deck over coating

This material is totally new to me. I like that I can get it custom color matched. I have another deck with composite decking and matching the color to that deck will unify the two decks even if they are of different materials. Since I do not have any experience with this material this is about all I can say about it for now. My hope is that it will go on thick, stay that way, and stick to the deck forever.

The final choice

At this point, this sounds like a good material to use on decking but after reading the reviews on this material and other similar materials there are just too many negative reviews. It seems that the material and the wood have different expansion contraction rates which result in separation of the coating from the deck boards. It’s either that or preparation protocols are not narrow enough to guaranty 100% adhesion. So I am opting out of using it. Maybe in the future, they can fine tune out the problems they are having with it now(Oct/2017). So it looks like a stain will be applied for now, probably a solid stain.

Deckover Video

Additional Information

Do you need more information on your areas frost depth?

Do you need more information on building techniques for decks, ramps, skirting?

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Author
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RayC.

Editor at Mybusyretiredlife.com

Trained in the mechanical arts. I have worked on anything dealing with a home from changing a light bulb to moving a load bearing wall. As for the recipes, they came about after I could not find what I was looking for and recipes that over a lifetime I have come to love and want to share with the world.