Winner: Clay Marrow - September 2004

Overview

Well, I have finished my deck, and it was much easier to build using the floating foundation system than the old concrete footing method. I purchased the 3' splash plans but had you guy's widen it from 3 to 7 foot. The original plans called for the outside edge of the deck to be around 32', but my wife decided that wasn't quite large enough, so we built another two frames. The outside dimension ended up measuring about 47' 10'. We're both glad that we lengthened it (very easy to do using this floating system). We also decided that we wanted to incorporate some sort of deck lighting, so, I installed a 7 watt low voltage light on every other rail post. If you look at the post close up picture you'll see we ran the wiring through the post, we also decided it would be nice to have a receptacle on the deck for radios and such. I didn't like being able to see all of the bracing so I bought 1x4x6 treated fence pickets, cut them to length and used them as skirting, we think it gave the deck a real finished look. I saved quite a bit of money on my railing posts. Rather than buy them pre-machined, I just bought more 4x4x8's than the plans called for, cut them in half and machined them myself. We decided to top off the post with decorative post caps. We were pretty happy with the way they turned out. Your plans worked out great for us, they took all the guess work out of the angles that needed to be made. I'm already planning on building a lower level deck around the front of the pool next spring. Thanks Deckman, I appreciate the advice and help.