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Finished In 48: All Decked Out! Need the lowdown on deck installation? Here's Gionni Thompson Top-10 list of decking tips. From "Finished in 48" episode DF48-101

A police detective hopes to surprise his wife and kids with a new deck and paver-patio and depends on his buddies, and DIY's Gionni Thompson, to get the job done in just 48 hours. Below are Gionni's top ten decking tips that came in especially for this Finished in 48 project.

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Figure A

Gionni's Top 10 Decking Tips

1. When you lift up the planks on an old pre-existing deck (figure A), you you just don't know what you may find underneath. In this project, we found two different sets of sprinkler valves. While the best solution might be to move them out into the yard and re-pipe ther sprinkler system, this is a timely and laborious process. To save time and a lot of effort, you can just build a box around them out of some spare two-by-six pieces. Cut and build a box frame out of two-by-sixes to fit around the valves and place it so that it sits flush with the top of your framing joists. When you go to put the planks on top, cut them to fit exactly in the hole you left for the valve area and then screw them directly into the frame you made (not the joists). Now, when you need to get to the sprinkler valves you will have a nicely hidden access panel by which to do so.

2. To help prevent the foundation of your deck from rotting, pour some concrete caissons, or anchor posts, to support the deck. Rather than setting your foundation framing directly on the dirt (as was the case with the original deck) cut some tubing material to the size of your hole (usually 24-inches deep), place it in the hole and pour cement into it like a mold. You will need to place a J-bolt and post anchor into the top of it as well so that you have something for your foundation to hook into. Once it sets, you will have a solid caisson that won’t easily decay to anchor the foundation of your deck.

Figure B

3. To save time and recycle some of the materials from your old deck, you can reuse the existing frame foundation (if it’s not too rotted) and still add caissons by lifting it up onto some wooden stakes placed at each corner so that you can continue to build the deck on top of the frame while waiting for the concrete caissons to set (figure B). To make it workable and safe, you should remove all old nails from the frame before you start working. To ensure that your deck will be level, you will want to tack the back ledger board of the frame to your house before lifting it up onto the stakes. You can screw the ledger board directly into the concrete foundation of the house, making it level (if your foundation is level — check first) and providing additional support for the deck. When attaching the deck to the stakes placed at each corner, use a bubble level across the joists to ensure that you won’t have to re-level the deck after the planks are on. Then, once the concrete has set, you can transfer the frame directly onto the caissons by removing the stakes and fastening the rim joists to the caisson anchor bolts. This will provide your deck a sturdy and level foundation for years to come.

Figure C

4. If your foundation is not exactly level to begin with you can still ensure that your deck is level by using a transit tool (figure C). Find your high point by looking through the transit viewfinder and then make a mark on the foundation of your house at this point. When leveling the earth, you will want to add dirt or road base to bring your low spots up to the high point, which is much easier than trying to excavate the high points to reach the low point. Once you have found the high point, mark it at both ends of where your deck will sit and snap a chalk line between these two so that you know where to tack your ledger board. Now, you can level the front side of the deck frame by placing it on stakes and checking it with a bubble level (as explained in the above tip #3).

	Figure D
	Figure E
	Figure F Mark levels the crushed silica road base material in the area where the pavers will be located.
	Figure G Travis comes through with a hammer and knocks off the remnants of the pieces of siding that were cut off with a circular saw. Now brick pavers can be placed against the house without obstruction.
	Figure H Jason and Josh snap a chalk line on the house so they have a frame of reference to level the brick pavers.
	Figure I Gerry Williams places the inner row of paver bricks, the last row to go in.

5. Composite decking material, as was used in this episode, requires a frame with support joists in place every 16 inches on center. If your existing frame has wider spaced joists you can simply add more in between them to reach at least the required minimum amount. More is almost always better than less when it comes to support beams, as they will reinforce the deck and make it that much stronger (figure D).

6. If you want to connect your ledger board and deck frame to the foundation of your house but don't want to move the entire deck, or your ledger board doesn't fit because the gap is too narrow in places, you can use some spare pieces of two-by-four as pressure blocks to fill the gaps between your frame and foundation (figure E). Be sure to measure individually each gap where a pressure block will be and cut your blocks to fit snug in the gap. This prevents the frame from having to "suck up" any additional gaps that may exist when you go to screw in your concrete anchor bolts if you don't measure each piece of wood separately. This causes stress on the frame and could trigger it to break or the facing to come off the front. If your wood begins to bend or crack it will throw off your level line and force you to start over, basically from scratch, by building a new frame.

7. For a concrete pavestone patio you do not have to dig all-that deep to make it level. Just level the ground as much as you can by eye and make it low enough that when you stack the pavers they don’t get so high they hit the bottom of your siding. From there, you can put down a crushed asphalt or silica material known as road base and use this to level the ground and set your stones in (figure F). The road base can be quickly added and removed, so it makes leveling easier and saves you the time and effort of having to dig into the hard Colorado clay like what was found in this episode.

Helpful Siding Tip: If you have siding pieces on your house that create an uneven surface up against the bottom of your wall, you can save time by simply measuring where the height of the pavers will be on the wall and cutting off the unnecessary part of the siding pieces with a circular saw. Just make sure the depth setting is not too deep on the saw or you will cut into your house. In doing this, you will have a flush surface to place the pavers up against and will avoid unnecessary and tedious stone-cutting later on in your project (figure G).

8. A trick to help you level your road base: Tie a line of string (the brighter the better, so you can see it) to stakes placed on opposite ends of where you are going to put the pavers (figure H). Run the line diagonally across your road base so that it is pulled taut right at the level you want the bottom of your pavers to sit. You can use your transit to mark the points on each stake so that your line is level all the way across. Then, you will want to level the road base until the string sits just above the top layer and there is virtually no gap between the string and the base. The string should be taut enough that it makes contact with the road base, but so much so that it gets hung up on the rocks; there should be some play here. You can use this same technique to help you level the actual pavers as well.

9. When laying concrete paving stones, to give you a clean (uncut) line of pavers on the outer (visible) edges of your patio, avoid cutting the stones that will make up these edges. Instead, start laying your patio with the second row from the house. Go ahead and lay your first row of pavers right up against the house and then lay your second row right up against it, as if you are starting at the house and working outward. Measure about a half-inch back toward the wall from the edge of your first row of pavers and tie a line between stakes to mark this line (figure I). This will be where you actually start the second row of pavers. At this point, remove your first row of stones (against the wall) and move the second row back until it sits even with the line you just strung across the road base. Continue to lay the rest of your concrete paver rows, working toward the outer edges until you reach the end. This method will ensure that any stones needing to be cut-to-fit will come at the end and will wind up sitting flush against the house, virtually out of sight.

10. A neat tip for dealing with composite decking material can be found in the type of screws you use to attach the planks to the framing joists beneath. Because composite decking is a plastic-based material, if you use regular screws you are likely to get "mushrooming," where the plastic material bunches up at the head of the screw and prevents it from getting flush with the surface of the plank. By using composite deck screws you can avoid this messy and annoying effect. This type of screw has loosely wound threads at the bottom (tip) to go into the wood of the frame and force the composite shavings to recess or sink into the hole rather than mushrooming back up. Composite deck screws have tightly wound threads at the top (head) in order to drill into and hold the composite decking on top of the wood. This multi-level screw is just what you need for this kind of job.