We are contemplating building a deck with this system and have a couple of options. Our door is approx 35 from the ground so we are either thinking of building the entire deck at that level, if that is the case, is it the total measurement from ground to deck surface that is used to determine if the diagonal blocking is required?

The other thought was to build the deck basically at ground level but then we need to figure our the best way out of the house and onto the deck. Is it better/easier to build two fully independent decks and have a set of stairs between them such that you would exit the house onto say a 4x4 deck that would then have steps connecting it to a lower rectangular deck. Or could you build a larger rectangular deck that ran all the way in front of the door and build a platform on top of the surface to build up the steps to the house?

thanks for any input you can provide, if there a any pictures of these types of builds even better, did a search but didn't see anything exactly on par with my questions.

Slight update to my original question. I have determined that our county will allow this method of construction for decks at or below 24" of elevation so that would seem to rule out the option of putting the full deck at the door height. What are the best options given this restriction.

Thank you