This was one of my first wood sun decks in Dbn that I undertook. The Guest House we constructed it for had just opened up the side of the dining venue on the 1st floor utilising sliding doors and now required to extend the room by adding a sun deck of approximately 14m². It is always critical to initially break through the wall and install the sliding doors and then produce the wood sundeck. This way the deck installer can get the surface of the deck flush with the front to the room. I have built one sun deck before where the customer insisted that I produce the sun deck first after which they were going to break through. Whilst we did our best to measure where the inside floor was, there may possibly nonetheless have been a little step up or down the moment they had broken through. On this build however it was accomplished the correct way around and the sundeck was flush with the ground inside of the dining room.
The sun deck was a standard cleat, beam and joist system where we fixed a cleat to the wall by using sleeve anchors, erected vertical posts and attached a beam to that after which we ran joists in between the cleat and beam with a small canter lever. We needed to try and set our posts as far out as possible so as to produce ample room underneath the deck that would be utilised.
The balaster was a usual picket style one. These are the safest and certainly the sole one that is fully compliant with building regulations. Building rules state that there must be no opening that is bigger than 100mm. With all other balasters you’ll find some spaces that turn out to be bigger than 100mm. Aside from being non-compliant they can be not that safe specially for small children. With the pickets running in a vertical direction it is far more difficult for young children, or adults, to climb up on the balaster and fall through. The other styles offer you far more horizontal parts that people can utilize to climb up on.
The stairs we built here joined the deck to the pool area which was about half a floor up from ground level. There were separate concrete stairs running from ground level to the pool area but the new wooden stairs we built could now be used to access the pool area, and the rest of the outside area, from the dining room. Because there was no way of supporting the stringer mid-way we had to ensure that we had the correct width of stringer so that it would not break over time. Most of the strength in a piece of wood is in the width and not the thickness as the downward force is exerted on the width.
We finished up by filling our holes with epoxy and sawdust and sealing with a Timberlife Satin Wood Base 28 Mahogany tint. In our decks we counter sink the screws which leave a small screw hole that water can get into. It is important to fill these so that no water can get in. If water does get in it can travel down the end grain and will cause the wood to rot much quicker at the point of the screw hole. Water travels through wood along the end grain rather than being absorbed from the face or side grain. Wood filler is also not suitable as it will pop over time due to the weather. Clear epoxy works well mixed with a little saw dust to match the colour. Once it’s dry, use a grinder with a sanding pad to flat it and then sand the grind marks off before finishing.
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