Build Update: Deck Laying Info Dump || Dr Decks

[Music] see guys dr. decks here today I'm rolling solo and I'm laying down some decking running a bunch of screws trying to get some patterns cut in sanded out trying to get ahead of the game a little bit so follow along as you see how we install deck boards if you like what you see don't forget to click that subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you want to be notified every time we're putting out for us content alright let's get going alright so what I'm doing today is I'm installing timber tech Azek decking this is called coastline and we're using a hidden plugging system called cortex I'm sure you've seen it on our videos before but I like to lay four to five boards at a time today I'm laying five boards at a time because they're not super long they're only twelve footers usually if I'm running 12s or 16s I'll install five at a time sometimes when I'm running 20s I'll only install four at a time but I'm taking these special spacers provided to me by a Zack and they have an eighth inch gap on one side and a 3/16 inch gap on the other so I'm running the 3/16 inch gap down like so and then I'm putting a special clamp they're made by Irwin they call it quick grits and they sell this adapter it's a deck clamp adapter now they're not designed for these heavy-duty clamps they're actually designed for a lighter duty clamp but I didn't like the lighter duty clamps so I actually notched these clamps with a grinder to make these fit onto my heavy duty clamps and then I now use these as dedicated deck board cinching clamps that's all they're used for I don't use them for anything else these clips always stay on them and they always are used just to do exactly this you put this on here and go like that and then watch the boards now they're tight and that's how I keep a nice straight line I can clamp all these boards together take a look at the line if I don't like it I can release tension I can add a shim here and there to thicken a spot if there's a thin spot or something I don't like I can straighten the boards as I go that's why I like to lay four or five boards at a time because I can control the gap I can also control how straight my line is from one point of the deck to the other which are all really important to me I don't like to look down a line ago and it goes like this I'm like whoa who laid that you know I like to have things did a certain way so this is one way I found there's all different types of methods of how to pinch and gap in space your board there's also several different methods on how you do a hidden fastener for this particular deck because we did a waterproof bladder and we have G tape and all these things instead of using a clip which has to get through all that membrane material before it gets to the joist I'm not comfortable that I want to pin these boards down hard so they don't move so I'm double screwing and locking everything together and it's every 13 inches on center and the reason for 13 inches on center on this particular deck it's because I have a lot of flat blocking 2 by 12 which is 11 and a half if you run your deck 13 inches on center you're gonna have an 11 and a half inch gap in between your joist base that allows me to build my bridges wherever I needed to you can see one right behind me it's like right in the middle of a joist Bay okay and that's why this deck is all 13 inches on center so I didn't have to rent special blocking I've made that mistake in the past where it was just a nightmare trying to stack a bunch of blocks in a joist Bay was not fun so this works a lot better and it works really good for our bladder keeps everything from leaking and keeps water diverting properly so anyways now I'm gonna take my clamps on I'm gonna clamp up four zones and I got actually five sets of spacers so built I only have four of these built so I might have to go get a couple more the initial investment was you know each clamps like 40 50 bucks plus the adapter clip so you know I was probably 250 300 into these clamps at the time I bought these I didn't want to buy any more than that but now that I've had these for a while I can afford to go buy a few more so that if I want to do full 20-footers and clamp everything up at the same time and then screw it off I can so anyway that's a brief explanation of of how I'm laid this board so I'll eight two and a half feet of decking at a time and then I do another two and a few after that when you're running multiple sections on a really wide deck a string can be your best friend I have four different zones I have to lay decking in and if I didn't pay attention when you look down the line it would go like this and I wanted to go like this so use one of these and it'll help you I've already I do it about every four or five boards sometimes every ten boards if I know I'm on point I'll just come back and it doesn't have to be you don't have to be perfect you just got to be close because you can make you can make up a little sixteenth and a sixteenth here and there remember if you if you change something for sixteen that's a quarter inch which is a lie when you're laying a floor so if you need to go more than that then you probably had a problem when you're first starting but I just need the string and then this double-check it pin this thing with a couple screws pull the clamps and get a really good look at it with my eye - I'll get down I'll show you that in a minute I'll get down on this board and really look at it and make sure it's exactly where I want it so that's what I'm gonna do right now I'm gonna put in a couple screws I'm not gonna put them all the way in and then I'm gonna double check it and then if I'm happy with it then I'll set them for the cortex plug all right so now I have the deck boards gap the way I want them I've pinned each joist so I move my clamps out of the way just so I'm not kicking them and knocking them over and they're just kind of a in the way thing so since each joist is pinned my my spacers are still keeping their spot so my deck boards are still nice and straight alright so now what I'm gonna do normally when I don't have a bladder I'm dealing with I would just screw this off because I'd be able to see the joists between the deck boards but because there's a waterproof bladder I'm using a chalk line because it's amazing how bad you can get off when you're trying to chalk a straight line and then you start wandering you might completely miss a joist then you punctured the bladder now you've created a leak so so far with a thousands of screws that we've ran in this decking we only have one blow-up because we hit a knot below the surface of the joist and a blew out our screw and when we took it out it created a leak so we went under and coughed it and then reran the screw so this way this minimizes damages or potential leaks in the bladder so I'm gonna go through and chalk it you can see the chalk lines already from the rest of the deck this just keeps our art screws straight even though we're kortek seeing this whole deck and you really can't see the plugs sometimes you can see them if the hip if you Sun hits it just right so I want to make sure that when you do see those plugs that at least are in a straight line I use white chalk because it cleans up really easy it does not stain the decking I can get I can still get to usually 2 or 3 poles off of one chalk line but the end got really wet last week and it's still drying out so it'll hold maybe two lines worth of chalk and then I have to reach Auk I've never had a problem with white chalk but actually blue chalk can stain PVC as well just a little bit but don't ever don't ever use red chalk when you're talking off lines on a deck you will definitely regret it it will stain all right so I had to take a few minutes mounting around posts always take a minute and so what I had to do was we put a unique squiggle instead of a straight pattern break we did a unique squiggle in the deck as a break so that we haven't we have two spots that are over or a spot here that's over 20 feet long and instead of running a random pattern which I don't like to do and the client didn't want either she rather have everything break cleanly on some form of a pattern break so we came up with a squiggle I had to start and stop the deck boards because I can't cut it it's really hard to cut a board this close to a post and get the gaps right and everything so I had to take a minute and put the squiggle in place so that I could actually figure out where that goes and how it goes and now that that's done I can go ahead and screw off my boards all right all right so now I have this next section of the deck laid I have it pinned in place so now what I'm gonna do is draw all the cut lines and I'm gonna cut this thing out and then finish screwing it off and then I'm gonna start laying the next section of deck when I'm cutting deck boards I actually use the curved board as the template because if you just try to cut out a perfect circle on a deck and expect your curved surface borders to fit they never do they never will because decking isn't a perfect circle when you when you bend it it's it's almost impossible to make it perfect so I'm having a slight issue with laying this out because the I put the board's I stacked them up like this against the trailer the least amount of radius were elongated they're not crowned like this they're coming elongated like this and I think they might have sagged a little bit in the Sun not a ton so it's not that big a deal but what I'm gonna do is since I have to break this board because there's a squiggle that we put in the center of the deck and I'm gonna take that squiggle all the way out so it has a place to drain since I'm doing that I can break this border into a couple different sections of the curve where it'll still appear to be a circle but it will break in a certain spot so it gives a little bit of place gives it a place to relax a little bit so that I'm not tensioning on this board so hard [Music] hey guys thanks for watching I really appreciate it if you got something out of today's video don't forget to go don't forget to click the subscribe button and and don't for don't forget don't forget a don't forget to click the bell icon the bell icon I tell you if you want to be notified every time we're putting out fresh content and if you wanna learn how to bend decking don't forget to go to the doctor decks master class help deck board bending thanks for watching today guys have a great day [Music]

Channel: drdecks

Views: 6,346

Rating: 4.9471364 out of 5

Keywords: Dr decks, drdecks, deck building, custom decks, pacific northwest, carpentry, decks, deck, deck board bending, Deck laying, laying decking, azek

Id: m8_FGX8YgUA

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020