There's no better way to enjoy the summer weather than with a deck you built yourself. This post, we're covering the first necessary steps to a deck, the foundation, so you can enjoy the summer weather in comfort and style.
Before building your deck foundation, there are a few things to consider:
- How you are going going to hang the deck and support it on the house.
- Whether or not you have attained the necessary permit.
- Whether or not you need to have a professional survey the property.
Once you've deal with these potential issues, proceed to next steps.
- Draw out a plan for the deck. This will include how large you want it to be, where the boundaries of it will be in your yard, how many joists are going across it, how many support beams and their placements, how many support wood columns and their placements, and if the deck will be one or two tiers (or more).
- Set up a series of batter boards away from the house. These are basically stakes with a horizontal board connecting them, and they are used to help measure where your deck will be built with string extending between them and the house. Measure carefully - you don't want to have a slovenly built deck when you and your family will be sitting on it.
- Once the strings are set up to represent where the deck will be, mark your column locations and remove the strings. It's time to get to actually building!
- Dig the holes for the column forms. Make sure you dig to follow with regulations in your area.
- Put in the forms and backfill each hole.
- Before you proceed any further, you need to have a building inspector measure each hole then sign off.
- Once you've been cleared, put about 5 bags of concrete in each column form with an attachment for a metal bracket to hold the wood columns.
- Once the concrete is set, attach the metal bracket on top of the form, then install wooden posts into the brackets.
- Now you need to attach the ledger board to the house. You may need to remove some siding in order to attach it directly to the house. It's important that you do so for the structural integrity of your deck and the safety of you and your family who will use it. Attach it first with a nail gun, but before you attach any joists to it, you'll need to screw it in.
- On ledger wood, install hangers for the joists.
- Now is the time to lag the ledger to the house with screws. Make sure you stagger them so as not to split the wood.
- Using a laser level can help ensure that your columns are level as you put the support beams across them. Make sure they are level. If you have multiple layers to your deck, adjust as necessary.
Follow those steps and you'll have a solid foundation to build the rest of your deck on! Check out the video below for more information on this project.
