Federated Handy People

An effective way to build a deck is a style I call “Slab-On-Grade” which is a problem solver for a lot of situations and a bit of a cost saver.

An important part of deck fabrication is to design it to never fail under “live-loads”, which translated to English is… it doesn’t collapse while you have it full of guests dancing to The Macarena.

Use the controls in the photo browser below to see the progress as it happened.

Fine Tuning The Aggregate

It's fairly important to get the top surface as smooth as possible at this point. It requires a bit of cycling between the plate compactor use and the reshaping of the surface. If the project surface isn't flat, the deck that sits on top of it won't be flat either. Extra time spent here pay's off in the end.

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If the wooden beams supporting the deck are touching the flat ground, you cannot fall down. When a deck needs to be supported in the air by wooden columns, it’s a much different piece of engineering. Above is an example of such a deck.

In this situation, we also covered the tiny side yard with a wooden walk path to get rid of the hard-to-maintain place that didn’t grow grass, did grow weeds, and made the dog’s feet muddy every time she came back in the house.