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Trying to build a deck, help, please!

Good afternoon guys,

First of all, Congratulate everybody here for all the info you guys share. It's amazing!

I'm completely new in terms of building a deck and a friend of mine with more idea than me will help me build it. So the plan is to completely deck the backyard area and build up some planter boxer.

The dimensions will be: 3600 x 7500. The ground is uneven so the height will vary in between 250 mm (closer to the house) up to 400 mm

I have many many doubts and I've been reading so many posts here, even went to the calculator https://www.blocklayer.com/deckcalculator.aspx to see if the info i've been getting would be right or not.

My first question is:

BEARERS:
How far should I put the posts? Following another thread which is quite similar to my idea, he placed the bearers @1800mm from each other. Knowing that the width is 3600 mm should i place them at the distance that the calculator gave me: 3 bearers @ 1678mm or 4 bearers at 1118mm.
Should I go with 2/140x45 F5 TP or Just 140x45 F5 TP or even 90x45 or 2/90x45? It would be a continuous span but i'm having trouble to read the tables you guys were posting.

Should I use gal stirrups or timber stumps?

JOISTS: For what i've seen: 140x45 H3 treatment pine @ 436 mm. Is it ok that separation in between joists or should I get them closer/more separated? I've also thought about using joist hangers and install joist between the bearers rather than on top, due to lack of clearance (only around 500 mm from floor level to ground), so I also appreciate your thoughts on this.

I attached two options of what the calculator gave me.

Every single reply will be highly appreciated!

Thank you!!

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Decking and Paving

Building and Construction

Landscaping

Comments

Jason

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community @Cariasvar. We're really happy to have you join us and look forward to reading about all your projects and plans for around the house and garden. We're sure you will get plenty of helpful information, advice and inspiration from our amazing community members for this decking project as well as many others to come.

Normally the ever-helpful @MitchellMc would be on hand to assist you, but he's taking a well-earned break at the moment. Let me tag some other members with plenty of decking experience, such as @Adam_W, @Chiren_J, @TedBear, @JDE and @bruce93 to see if they might like to share their thoughts with you and kick off the discussion.

Many thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Jason

MitchellMc

Hi @Cariasvar,

The calculator that you have used gives some fairly straight forward plans for what you input into it. How often you place a post is determined by the calibre of bearers. The larger the dimension of timber used, the longer the unsupported span can be. Generally, you would go with a single bearer setup unless there is some reason why you don't want to. In this case, the additional posts.

My preference would be to go with galvanised stirrups, but there is no reason why you couldn't use timber posts.

Joist spaced @ 436 mm is relatively standard and would be suitable. The calculator's job is to work out spans for you, which is what it is doing. It's always best practise to double-check though.

The double bearer setup illustrated would save having to install several posts and could be the easier option. That would be my choice.

Please let me know if you have further questions or need assistance.

Mitchell

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