In the forests of Dean and South Wales, we have a lot of gardens that are extremely steep and quite often unusable. The usual way to combat this is to cut and fill the bank, and build a selection of retaining walls, so you have a number of level tiers. But this can often be very costly, and you still end up with a number of small useable areas, rather than a large one. So one option is to construct a raised deck. This can be done on both low and high levels. This one was constructed by using 4” steal square upright posts, with a 150mm x 50mm (6”x2”) timber framework bolted to it. We than added 200mm x 50mm (8” x 2”) framework on top in the opposite direction. Crossing the joists in this manner is extremely strong. If you intend on building a low level deck, it is not needed as it is simple to add additional posts, but when the deck is high in the air, the posts are very long, so it is advantageous to use as little as possible.
These joists were all set at 600mm (2 feet) apart. This gap will vary dependant on the deck boards that are being used. We then started to fit the deck boards. I’m this case we used iroko boards. Iroko is a hardwood, which is very long lasting, and has a nice grainy finish. The downside of using any hardwood for a deck, is that it can scratch easier that treated softwood, plus we always advise on piling it once a year. Because we used a hardwood, all of the screws needed to be pre-drilled, and countersunk to accommodate the screw head. Then we gave it 2 coats of teak oil. There are other oils available, but we mainly use teak or linseed oils.
As this was a high level deck it needed a balustrading fitted as a pedestrian barrier. The client wanted a glass balustrade, which I’m not ever keen to fit as I have had some panels break whilst fitting. But this one went all ok. We then finished by cladded the steal posts with timber to make it all match.
During this job, we also had to construct the largest set of steps I have ever built, 28 steps at 2m wide (over 8 feet).
Constructed from natural stone that was sourced on site, with Indian sandstone slabs, which matched the paving we did around the decking. On the whole, this job ran very well, and was very enjoyable to do. The weather did hold us back slightly with a few days of rain and high winds which is not what you want with this type of project.
