OT Started building a deck today

HMmm.

The aircooled content here? Lets see, pool, Travis floating on his back, AHHH the mental image!

Tell the kids to clean up the back yard, or their bicycles will be nowhere to be found.

Looking forwards to the sequel, keep it up. :D

J.

When you get real real good with that post hole digger and get recooped, come on up. I have a bunch of post holes that need digging and there is going to be lots of rocks in the way. I'm getting to old for that kind of crap work. I'll even supply the beer and whatever redneck snacks you require. Pigs ears ? sow belly ? Possum nads ? What the hell kind of snacks were you always munching on again ?

Randy

oh yeah, bring your bike as we have roads that will equal the dragon and bring your guns as we have a few things that need shooting.

Randy

Did you soak the ground some the day before digging the posts? The moisture will soften the soil or clay before you dig it up. ;-) There are machines that you can rent that makes it easy and fast.

Are you dumping some gravel and sand down the hole before you place the post in the hole along with the concrete? Now are you making concrete posts or using treated wood posts? Or are the posts down already?

Have fun!

Hmmm... no, didn't soak the ground first. I thought about renting an auger but I didn't want to rush this project so I figured I could dig just a few holes each time I worked on it and honestly didn't think it would be quite that much of a pain to dig them with the post hole diggers. Plus, I could use the exercise. ;-) I'm putting a brick at the bottom of each hole for the post to sit on top of. All of the wood I'm using is treated wood including the posts. No concrete posts. Chris asked me if I was going to attach the deck to the house, too, and my answer was/is: I'm going to connect it to the house. There's vinyl siding on the house. I'm going to go every third stud (48") and cut into the vinyl siding enough to tack up a pressure-treated 2X4 against the stud as a spacer and then will use some 7" lag bolts I got to bolt the 2X10 outer band to the spacer/stud. That way the 2X10 outer band will have about 1/8"-1/4" or so of space between it and the house so I won't be crushing up against the vinyl siding but it will be attached to the house for sure. I'm also going to brace that band that's against the house from underneath with a 4X4. I'm going to notch the top of the

4X4 so that it fits kind of around the 2X10... not really "around" but you know what I mean? Kind of notch a "shelf" into the top of the 4X4 so that the 2X10 sits on the shelf and I can screw the 4X4 into the 2X10 from the side, too. This deck ain't goin' nowhere when it's finished. ;-) Maybe I'll build a ramp on one edge of it so I can drive the bug up on it and park there. :-D

A point: You might want to reconsider your approach to the pressure treated posts. Sono-tubes filled with concrete poured 6 "above grade will prevent the PT wood from rotting. (It's treated yeah....but it's still wood and it does rot) transition plates bolted to the concrete tubes make fastening deck supports mucho easier. If you put any weight on it over a rotten post things will get interesting fast. How long is your deck going to be? 16'? 4 lags into house studs may be underkill at that length. But....it's your parade so don't let me rain on it.

Also make sure you have a slight tilt away from your house for drainage. ;-)

I am with jtbartlett and think that the concrete posts poured in those cylindrical forms would last much longer. Those treated wood posts might last 10 years before rotting depending on your geographical area and how much moisture and termites you have. YES termites will eventually eat that treated wood..................you can ask me how I know! lol

Treated wood posts should be fine for a fence since it does not receive a lot of weight directly ontop of it.

Harbor Freight sells a fairly nice and fairly portable cement mixer that I used to pour some slabs, each slab using 32 bags of concrete. I can even park my 1970 Beetle on the concrete and off of the ground. Or you can rent a mixer. Makes it so you can do your concrete work at your leisure without having a cement truck waiting for you to wheel barrow the concrete in those little forms. ;-) Sell that mixer when you are done!

JMHO

60lb Bags of Sakcrete do a pretty handy job. Pre-mixed concrete in a bag, just add water. Use a wheelbarrow and a shovel. Sono-tube forms are cheap to buy. 48' gets you below frost if you get it there. Ideal situation would be to put a 5 gal pail in the hole with the tube inside the pail. Fill it with concrete. Frost won't heave your porch upwards. But if you live in the South, above points are moot save the concrete preventing rot and termites.

Yep that should do too! I like the larger mixer since you can dump in quite a few of those 60lb Bags of concrete and get thorough mix to pour in the tubes, or in my case when I was pouring each of my four (4'x8'x6") slabs. 32 bags for each slab and I dumped in 4-6 bags at a time into the mixer. The mixer allows you to not have to work that hard manually mixing the concrete. THAT will probably work you more than digging the holes. lol

hmmm 48' (48 feet) will work very well............ but IMHO is a bit much! lol

48" (48 inches or 4 feet) might be good enough for your footings! I remember angling the shape to a cone shape with the wider section at the bottom helps stop the up-heaving during my frosty winters. I did this when installing a fence back in 1998. Still looks good today even though I have sold that home.

I'm in the South. I'm not saying it's not done here but I've never personally seen anyone in this area use those sono-tubes. I've read about them and they seem like a good idea for some areas that get more rain than we do. I've seen 20+ year old decks in this area built just like I'm building this that are still in great shape. Around here we hardly ever even get a hard freeze so I'm not worried about digging down very far either. I'm digging down about 14" and putting a brick under each post and after the deck is completely built I'm going to fill the holes in with concrete around the posts. As far as the lag bolts go, I'm putting two on each stud that I bolt to. So far I've been spacing them every 32" instead of every 48" because I haven't got a long enough span yet where 48" would make sense. The bolts are 7" long. They are going through a 2X10, a 2X4 spacer, some OSB board (a little under 1/2"), and then into the stud. So they are *almost* going all the way THROUGH the stud. Should be getting right at 3.5" penetration which is the width of the stud. They are 1/2" lag bolts and I'm pre-drilling pilot holes for them because of their size. When I first started bolting the bands to the house I was also going to notch out the tops of some 4X4s and use them to brace under/around the bands that I was bolting to the house but it became VERY obvious to me that the lag bolts alone are going to be much more than enough for support. I appreciate the feedback, though. I updated the pictures, just added 4 more that show a couple of small outer bands that I bolted to the house today. Going to take this project slow and easy... if I can stand to.

No hard freezes huh? I bet you don't have rust much down there either! lol

Sounds good and keep those pictures coming! ;-)

"Shag" wrote: I'm in the South. I'm not saying it's not done here but I've never personally seen anyone in this area use those sono-tubes. I've read about them and they seem like a good idea for some areas that get more rain than we do. I've seen 20+ year old decks in this area built just like I'm building this that are still in great shape. Around here we hardly ever even get a hard freeze so I'm not worried about digging down very far either. I'm digging down about 14" and putting a brick under each post and after the deck is completely built I'm going to fill the holes in with concrete around the posts. As far as the lag bolts go, I'm putting two on each stud that I bolt to. So far I've been spacing them every 32" instead of every 48" because I haven't got a long enough span yet where 48" would make sense. The bolts are 7" long. They are going through a 2X10, a 2X4 spacer, some OSB board (a little under 1/2"), and then into the stud. So they are *almost* going all the way THROUGH the stud. Should be getting right at 3.5" penetration which is the width of the stud. They are 1/2" lag bolts and I'm pre-drilling pilot holes for them because of their size. When I first started bolting the bands to the house I was also going to notch out the tops of some 4X4s and use them to brace under/around the bands that I was bolting to the house but it became VERY obvious to me that the lag bolts alone are going to be much more than enough for support. I appreciate the feedback, though. I updated the pictures, just added 4 more that show a couple of small outer bands that I bolted to the house today. Going to take this project slow and easy... if I can stand to.

that will be fine... that is how it is done here too, but we have to go at leat 24" to get below the frost line(codes)... I've built probably upwards of a thousand decks in my area with planted posts... I prefer to go 30 inches on the post holes and much larger than standard posthole diggers, usually 18" diameter minimum.... capblock or actual footing for the 6x6 treated posts then fill holes with concrete...the concrete encases the treated lumber....

these have been approved for my area... can't say i'd like them, but they are apparently good enough:

Those work if you are on flat & level ground. Otherwise they move around a bit to much. Deck on our house has those. Deck is 5 years old and needs to be replaced soon.

Randy

they may work, and may work well, but just seems a bit odd to me...

Our's are on kind of a steep slope and we had a butt load of rain this year and things moved around. We have some slopes on our property that I could use a tractor on last year but can't this year.

We've been cutting up big oak and hickory trees the past week or so. Going to be real good trip to the sawmill to get boards cut from them.

Randy

Hickory is probably my favorite species, but my least favorite to work with.

What's it good for ? It was a pretty big tree.

Randy

Hickory wood.................. smoking meat and turkeys?

What's it good for ? It was a pretty big tree.

Randy

Only if you want to chip the wood up. That would be a whole lot of chipping here.

I thought about taking some straight branches and making hiking sticks out of them to sell to the tourists. Problem was I couldn't find any straight branches on this tree.

Randy