Category: Deck

Fall Colors

10/31/2015

October is almost over and its time for the Fall Color report. The oaks are just starting to change but the hickories have all turned brilliant yellow and gold. We had a nice sunny day yesterday so I took some pictures.

Aside from the beautiful Fall colors, the main observation is that most of the leaves are still on the trees and we get very little solar heating though October and much of November.

As the leaves come down we can start to see the lake and the Young Life Christian Camp in the valley below.

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Benches

10/3/2015

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Just before we started construction, we decided to replace the stairs coming into the house with a deck that would bridge the slope.

I won't say that it makes the house handicap accessible, but its always good to eliminate steps, especially outdoors. Here's a picture of the original concept.

We had a brief break in the Fall Monsoon weather last week so I finally got around to building the benches.

I'm working alone so I decided to build two 8-foot benches instead of a single long and unwieldy 16-foot bench.

I used pressure treated (PT) 2x6s for the sides and PT 2x2s for the slats.

Pieces of scrap 7/16" OSB were used as spacers to keep the slats aligned during assembly.

The finished benches are each 8'-3" long, 14 1/2" deep and 18" high.

Each bench has three 4x4 post legs attached with double 2x4s

Here, the benches are both assembled and ready to be mounted to the deck.

Titan post anchors were used to attach the posts to the deck (click on the image below to go to the Titan web site).

The Titan anchors are extremely strong and very low profile... but they are a LOT of work to install.

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The Deck is Done!

11/15/2014

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The deck is finally complete!

This is a long post but The deck has been a complex project.

Although we had an approximate design for the deck as part of the original house plan, we couldn't finalize the details until the house itself was complete and we could see everything in relationship to the slope and the trees we wanted to save.

We wanted the area under the deck to be a dry outdoor space so we investigated a variety of water-proof decking systems. We decided on AridDek from Wahoo Decks in nearby Gainesville, Georgia.

The AridDek system utilizes extruded aluminum planks.

The planks interlock with a continuous tongue & groove so there are no exposed fasteners that will ever leak. Each plank has an integrated duct that channels water off the end of the deck away from the house.

And it is non-combustible and fire resistant... which is a nice feature for a die-hard charcoal grill guy, like me. I can't wait to get the Weber grill set up!!

The terrain drops off pretty quickly going southwest from the house. We poured a 4 foot retaining wall along the south and west sides of the deck area. The wall is anchored in bedrock just a few feet below the surface.

As the house progressed we decided that instead of building a separate garage, we would have the area under the deck do double duty as an occasional carport. To eliminate center posts we used square, tubular steel posts and 12" steel beams to create a 24' clear span.

We made the railings with 1/2" electrical conduit, similar to the railing at the front entry. Because of the height, we decided to beef it up with 4x6 posts instead of the 4x4's used for the entry.

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Deck Footings are In

10/18/2014

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We had almost four inches of rain on Monday-Tuesday so the footings were delayed several days.

We poured the footings on Friday. The footings step down the slope about three feet. We will let the footings cure for a few days and pour the retaining walls next week.

I love concrete. It arrives in a giant bucket on a truck. It conforms to any shape you can imagine. And it lasts forever. All this from 2,000 year old technology discovered in the age of the Roman Empire.

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Starting the Deck

10/11/2014

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It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. We finally have all the details on the deck worked out and started construction yesterday. We hope to wrap this up by the end of the month!

The deck project is a bit complicated. The slope requires some substantial concrete footings and we decided to construct the deck itself with square tubular steel columns and steel I-beams because of the height.

In a few weeks it will look like this... and we'll be able to watch sunsets from the deck!

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Fall Colors

Benches

The Deck is Done!

Deck Footings are In

Starting the Deck

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