WIP - Pergola and decking

[morfa]

So after the current job is nearly finished, it's on to the next one. I'm building a small decking area and a pergola to sit on top of the decking. Wooo!

But Morfa, aren't you doing something with your shed? What about the kitchen? What about not starting projects when you've still got enough wood to sink a battleship in your middle room upstairs (seriously, I've got enough for a kitchen's worth of doors, a cabinet and several chopping boards and another big bit of 'just in case' wood). Eeeerrrr. Yeaaaaahhhh. Actually have you even fitted the vice to the workbench properly?

So rough plan of action now that I've got prices from the yard for the wood is as follows:

8ft by 8ft section of decking, with a 'corner pergola' on top of the decking. This will have the slats on top of the decking going out in a 'sun ray' pattern. So basically I'll be building a triangle and then spreading the slats out. I'm going to use 2x6s for the slats and 4x4s for the uprights. Sound ok?

I reckon the decking will take a weekend and the pergola will take a weekend as well. Roughly. The bulk of the job will actually be making sure the ground is level for the decking to go on it. I then saw a nice idea about concreteing a steel rod into the ground and then screwing the posts onto the steel rod.

Any pro-tips for the decking?

Should it be straight onto the ground? I suspect that a small drainage ditch around the outside would be a good idea? The bearers that are on the floor will be fully painted and pressure treated wood. In fact it all will be.

Also, screws? Or nails?

 

[Racers]

The last one I did we dug holes filled them with gravel plonked a concrete block on top, I lined them up with the decking first!
Then we plonked the unplanked decking on top and levelled it up with short lengths of 4x4 clamped on, marked the height and cut a half lap, these where screwed on and the top planked. It has worked very well.
We used Torx decking screws which worked very well.

Pete

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Annular ring nails? My bil is a joiner in NZ, and he goes nuts when he sees screwed decks over here - It's rarely seen in NZ. It's just not neccessary. (I screwed mine )

 

[Baldhead]

I'm lazy (and not fit enough) so my mate did my decking, screwed.

Baldhead

 

[No skills]

If your laying out your deck boards in a sunray pattern it will prolly take a bit longer than you think and a few more noggins in the frame here and there to get fixings to secure the deck boards.

I screwed my deck, at the time I built mine it was cheaper to use stainless steel screws (turboultra from screwfix) than 'proper' decking screws.

Get an impact driver if you haven't already got one.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Because I used brass screws, I pre-bored the holes. Despite having an 18 volt DeWalt, I found the best thing to drive them in was a Yankee screwdriver.

 

[MMUK]

Looking forward to pics of this one. I've literally just finished a quote for a 5m x 5m triple tier decking with gazebo and brick built BBQ for a mate.

 

[morfa]

Noskills - The decking won't be a 'sun ray' but the pergola bit will.

MMUK - I'm reckoning it'll be about £300 all in once I've factored screws, paint, extra concrete etc in. It's not as big as yours. I could have it about 2.5m by 4.5m which would be my preference but the client/boss/SWMBO just wants it small.

Screws it is. Yeah, I think an impact driver might be an idea.

Not sure I'll be buying any wood just yet, got the ground prep to do this weekend. Then a wedding, then it'll be cracking on with it.

 

[MMUK]

The quote I've just done is over £1600 for materials alone!

 

[KevM]

Lots of tips on the Timber Decking Association website including the 'gold standard' for raised timber decks with a desired service life of 60 years.

Morfa - your catalogue of works in progress made me chuckle/wince - pleased to see I'm not alone! :lol:

 

[morfa]

KevM - Thanks for the links. They all seem to assume the decking will be raised however. We're pretty much putting a small platform straight onto the ground.

MMUK - It's not big and it's just straight onto the ground. Nothing swanky at all. Not raised and there's no steps, rails or anything similar. And no BBQ or gazebo. I think that'll explain the price differences.

I've not entirely decided on how to lay it on the ground yet, but as I've still not got the ground level, that's not a massive worry yet. I'm curently veering towards simply laying the 2x6 joists on the ground, ontop of a gravel bed. I can then wiggle it a bit if it's not totally level to get it perfect. The posts of the pergola will either just be screwed onto the decking or have concrete, with steel rods coming out and then the posts stuck into that.

When reading this link:

http://www.richardburbidge.com/media/50 ... -sheet.pdf

I came across these 'decking ties' - http://www.amazon.co.uk/100-Simpson-Dec ... B00FNLTMN2 - which can be used to space the deck and provide an 'invisible' finish. I think I'll screw the frame, but nail the decking as it'll look better.

Anyway, here's some pics. The planks of wood indicate the size of it.

And after a little bit of digging, starting to get level and I've started a small trench for the gravel. Still got a bit more to remove.

 

[morfa]

Ok, well I've been back on this for the past few weekends. After a lot of badgering I've managed to convince the wife that laying a patio next to the decking area is the way to go. Otherwise we'd have a big random area of soil in the middle of the garden (I hate mowing so garden wasn't an option). I've dug the patio and decking area out to 5-6" (deeper at the bit nearest the house to account for the slope of the garden. The cement is to mix into the sand to firm it up a bit. I had a couple of extra bags of cement in the shed, so hopefully that should be enough.

So after a bit of ringing around, I've managed to get the sub-base, sand and cement for the patio for £145 (inc VAT and delivery) for the following - 1 ton of sub base (I already have about 500kgs of gravel and concrete chippings, which has been left over from other jobs), 1.5 tons of sand, 10 bags of cement

On to the decking, I've been seriously looking at this 'plastic' wood you can get. It's recycled as well, which the green part of me likes. Not cheap, but I'm only planning on using it for the parts that will be on the ground. The plan is to put sub-base and sand down across the whole patio/decking area. Put the patio down. Then the decking frame (4x4s) will sit on top of patio slabs. The plastic wood will be used on the skirting, which will hide the frame and patio slabs. I'll use normal decking for the deck on the top of that.

This is the plastic wood I'm talking about - http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/board ... lid-planks

Totally undecided about how to fix the pergola on top of the decking.

Option one would be to put concrete underneath the decking, with rods sticking out and then put the posts into that. This is harder, but probably more secure/stable

Option two will just be to fix the uprights to the decking using metal brackets. This is obviously cheap and easy. Less sure about how stable it'll be. Don't want it all collapsing at the hint of a bit of wind.

 

[Zeddedhed]

Personally I would be dubious about laying the joists straight on the ground - they'll definitely move over time. Better to concrete in some short timber posts and then cut them all off at the same level and go from there.
As for plastic decking, I installed some for a client about six moths ago and absolutely HATED the stuff!!
It murders your blades, and is extremely hard to screw into. Couldn't get screws out again if needed - they just snapped off.
It may be that the composite stuff I was using was exceptionally dense, but personally I wouldn't go near the stuff again.

Back to the joists - make sure there is some kind of DPM between any timber and the bare earth which err way you choose to go.
As for invisible deck clips......not so bad if you use expensive tropical deck boards, but anything prone to a bit more movement will likely pull them apart.

 

[morfa]

Well the plastic is just to go around the edge, so it won't be much. The actual decking will be normal pine decking. The frame which I'll screw the decking on to (and the plastic skirting) will be normal pressure treated wood, but it'll be resting on patio slabs, which will be piled two high above the ground. So the decking frame won't be directly on the ground. The only bit which will be on the ground is the skirting. So I either accept that I'll have to replace that from time to time or I'll try the plastic stuff.

The pergola will either just be straight onto the decking (with metal clips) or like you said into concrete.

 

[morfa]

Well I've started this again. I spent the weekend just gone making sure the slabs were level (they were easy to get right thanks to my hard work last year). Dug the holes for the posts.

All the wood arrived this morning. I managed to stuff up the order slightly, so had to take some of it back, which wasted a fair bit of time. I'd decided to do the cuts with power tools to 'speed things up'. Which was excellent till I found out that my extension cable is broken. So back to my Grandfather's Disston it was. I've managed to get the frame done this evening. So tomorrow evening I'll crack on with the actual decking planks. It's not a large area, 8ft by 8ft, just really somewhere to put a small table and a couple of chairs. Then I've got to sort out the pergola which will go over the top of it all. Pictures to come.