Hi all, I thought I would share my latest project - a deck ay my daughter's unit. I gained some inspiration reading other people's ideas on how to build a low profile deck and it helped me greatly. My take on this was a little different from other posts because I decided to use a screw pedestal system as the "bearers" for the joists. There were a number of reasons, the main being that the concrete paths and brick paving had moved over time and there was a lot of variation in the base height. It would have been a real pain using brackets bolted in the concrete path and achieving a constant level for the joists. Another is that the pedestal system is very easy to work with and can be screwed up or down to achieve the desired height. I ended up using a Buzon DPH-2 from Pascoe Constructions along with with a DPH-KIT5 joist holder. The cost was very reasonable at $5.18 +gst for the pedestal and $1.65 + gst for the joist holder. This pedestal has a height range of 35 - 53 mm. There are other sizes to choose from. They are incredibly strong each having a breaking load of 1460kg. The difficulty I had was finding an answer to was how many per joist would I need. The most acceptable answer was that based on a 90 x 45 H3 MGP10 joist the maximum spacing for a bearer would be 1.2m . My deck is 2.1m wide and 2.7m wide so there are 3 pedestals on the 2.1 joists and 4 pedestals on the 2.7 joists. Joists are 450mm apart and the decking is Merbau 90 x 19.
I miscalculated the actual variations in the path level and in some cases I needed to raise the pedestals by using a brick paver underneath or some villaboard sandwiched between two layers or damp course.
I intend to seal the deck with Intergrain Ultra Deck Natural.
One thing to note is that you can see the pedestals poking out at each end. I will build a step to cover these. The other way is to have a double joist at each end about 8cm apart and use the innermost joist for the pedestal supports so the endmost joist hides the pedestal - like a small overhang.
Some photos....
