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Thinking about a deck

Some activity on the home front. An influx of money followed an extended bout of work, and it seemed the money needed to be spent.

I’d envisaged a deck at the back of the house for about five years. That’s ever since I moved in.

Then, two things were suddenly available. Money to pay, and the right decking.

I’d been contemplating the decking material, and my first choice, bamboo, was suggested by Vincent, my former flatmate. He was building one over his deck, and the benefits looked great.

Sadly, the supplier had sold out.

In the meantime, I’ve been looking at Vitex, a sustainably harvested tropical hardwood. But also unavailable.

Kwila was available, but it had only been in short lengths of 90 mm wide boards for the last four years.

The day a major chunk of money arrived, Mitre 10, the major hardware store in town, just happened to have almost sufficient 140 mm wide boards in long enough lengths. There wouldn’t need to be any joins. The deck required 4.2 m lengths, and there they were.

Better too long, than too short.

I needed 28 lengths and took 23 as that was all they had on the shelf. There was more on another shelf, but they wouldn’t let me take the last five because it involved moving all the other lengths around.

A few weeks later, and I needed them. Lucky. There they were. The last batch.

At least I had the decking, which I stored in the garage.

The lack of height between the ground level and the decking finished level meant no room for bearers. I needed to put the joists directly on the treated timber piles.

That meant I’d need twice as many piles, as the decking can only span 480 mm, and the 100 × 50 mm joists span 1100 mm.

That gave 24 piles needing to be concreted in, all at the same finished height and all in line.

24 holes to dig. 24 bags of instant concrete that needed to go 100 mm below the piles.

Plenty of hard work getting all that in the ground

Fortunately, I found a pack of plastic packers of various thicknesses. That got the finished decking to be ± 1 mm or thereabouts.

That made it easy in the final analysis to level up the joists.

author | GJ Coop | posted | 07 November 2024
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