Building A Ground Level Deck with LED Lights l Composite Deck (part 2)

thanks for tuning into this video in the previous one I created a frame for this thing and I'll link that down in the video description so if you watch part one and you left a comment thank you for your feedback I do acknowledge some things could have been constructed better and for that I want to address a few of those before moving on to part 2 using joist hangers is the best way to connect the joists they're easy to install and you can install them with nails or screws which I prefer shorter screws were used to secure two joist hangers to the joist frame and a longer screw was driven at an angle through the joist and into the joist frame to reinforce the corners are added galvanized ankles and screwed those in place I also beefed up the connection to the post by adding galvanized carriage bolts after drilling out the holes I then use a anti turn washer under carriage bolt before putting those into the hole I'll then secure the boat by using a washer lock washer and a nut as I tighten the nut the anti Turner washer bites into the wood and prevent the bolt from spinning even with the deck being completed at this point I can still get under the deck to every location and still improve the build quality all of the lumber used in this project is ground contact pressure-treated southern yellow pine timber these are the same lumber I use for my fence post when I install the fence eight years ago and of course it's easier to do it before adding all the deck boards and going through this trouble better late than never now those are the most concerning improvements but it's time to get this deck on the roll in this video we're gonna pick up where we left off and finish the deck the substructure of the deck is made from 2 by 8 pressure treated lumber and for the decking I'm gonna be using a composite material by tricks for a number of reasons unlike real wood you don't have to spend days trying to upkeep it and also bring back its to life it's very low maintenance you can get the decking in a few different lengths so I designed the deck to be 16 foot and I also went with the 16 foot decking this way I didn't have to have any joints the first row of the deck is the most important rope Trek's make these Universal starter clips and these allow you to secure the outside edge of the first deck board I am going for a super clean look here so I want hidden fasteners now one thing to keep in mind is if you're not going with the hidden fasteners then you shouldn't need a universal start Eclipse the hidden fasteners have these little wings on them that sits within the groove of the deck boards and using the included bit you can drive the screws down into the joists one thing I learned along the way is it was best to drive the screws in about half way and leave it just high enough so you can get the next deck board onto the clip at that point you can come back and tighten them up the hidden fasteners will be placed at every joist this would be a repetitive process during this row by row until we meet the end one thing I find helpful is to place a stop block at the beginning of each row as I'm attaching the deck boards as I approached the anklet section I approached it the same way as I was previously on the deck I just continued to work towards that and wherever the board hangs off that's where it's going to get cut with the majority of the angled piece attached and then drew out a chalk line I ended up cutting outside the line this way I can play it safe and I can always use a sander to sand it down to the face board a charging saw at first and that worked out okay but a circular saw works out so much better with the deck boards being trimmed down I tried using a router but that got a little difficult because I had to keep applying the clamp and removing it and adjusting along the way so I decided to use a hand saw which I felt a bit more comfortable with and I felt like I had more control when securing the end board I saw in the tricks manual that you can use a piece of wood underneath and attach it from below by running a screw at an angle up and into the deck board that's an option I may keep in the back pocket and I can do that at any point even after the deck is complete this composite deck is proven to be pretty tough and durable it's actually putting up more of a fight than the wood using the sander now this option was a bit more tedious but I felt like using a belt sander was the best way to go here and it worked out pretty well I used the thirty grit sandpaper on this and I'm pretty happy with the results cutting the big boards at the top of the deck was pretty easy compared to what I have to do at this step now this was a little more challenging for me I'm going to take this a different route I'm gonna take a large piece of cardboard and cut out the shape of this section of this step this was the only accurate solution that I could come up with at the time and I think it worked out pretty well it just so happened that I had a shipment that came in right around this time so even if you don't have a piece of cardboard this large you can always tape a few together to come up with the same shape I use the cardboard to determine how many pieces of deck four that was gonna need to fill out the step I laid out each deck forward with the hidden fasteners so that it would be an exact replica then I placed the cardboard on it just so that it overlaps those areas and then I took a sharpie and marked along the cardboard this way I can mark all of the big boards I need it for this section I then use the circular saw to cut along the line that was drawn out and although you can use a guide to cut directly on the line being perfect - the line is not as important because this cut will be covered by the fascia now with all the parts cut you can double check and see how this lays out from start to finish there wasn't a complete day that I spent working on this deck it consistently rained on and off so even tackling the smallest thing on this deck was a challenge due to the weather I didn't get a good shot installing eclipse on the first row of the deck so let's take a look here what I did with the clips I clamped on a piece of scrap wood here which allowed me to set the edge by placing the clip up against those and screwing those down I lined up each clips with the joists and once I completed that entire row I can then start to place the deck boards in place [Music] and now I can begin to installation of the hidden fasteners on the inside of the deck board I left the hidden fasteners loose so I can slide the second deck board in place and if that looks good you can go ahead and screw down to fasteners now our purpose they left the deck boards long this way if I had any issues with the angled cut I can either push it down or adjust it any way I need to before making a find a cut I repeated the same process for the third deck board since the third deck board had a sharp angle on it I couldn't reach both ends at one time so I use a piece of lumber I had laying around to hold down the far end while I hammer in from one side and it just caught my attention at the small piece that fits in his corner needed some support underneath so I added a piece of 2x4 here added the tricks deck tape and screwed that in place and with the 2x4 underneath pressure-treated of course I was able to add a couple hidden fastener clips to hold down this small piece I slid the small piece in place then I cut it off with the handsaw right now I'm preparing to finish off the fascia and I want to make sure that I have all these boards secured as much as possible now if I'm gonna go ahead and fasteners I'm gonna do my best to try and go clean with mitre corners I used the 12 inch fascia which I ripped out on the table saw slightly bigger than the total of the deck frame and the deck board I sanded and cut down both ends of the deck board so that they're even with the deck frame so I made this really quick jig that allowed me to drill all the holes at the same distance apart the jig is set up to mark three holes at one time and also keeping it 1 inch from the edge if I mark the backside with a pencil I can move the jig and then drill the next set of holes now I didn't even go all the way through the fascia board I just drew it slightly down so that I could mark it and then that was enough now I could have drew all the fascia boards at one time but I only drilled the one that I was planning to install at that particular time now I spoke to one of the reps over at tricks and Mel gave me some really good pointers to install an aphasia aside from the screws he suggests adding a construction adhesive on the backside of the fascia and he also put me onto this deck screw depth setter and this allow you to set a perfect depth of the screw every single time now I did try this on a test piece and it worked out fine and although the screws are going to be exposed on the fascia it's super hard to even see them unless you get close up depending on the deck material you choose they have the right screws to match that the fascia board come in 12-foot section so I couldn't go to the entire span of the 16-foot deck so I had to extend them by modern area where they met when I cut the fascia for the front side of the deck I made sure that the mitre end was away from the step my thinking here will be less busy and a miter joint will be away and not as noticeable to put the finishing touches on this I added a small piece of mitre piece along the back of the step this way when you see it from a distance it looks really good one exciting part about this deck is being able to use it at night time so of course adding lighting is a great way to improve visibility I added masking tape in the approximate location so that it's easier to make a mark I could have gotten away with two lights per step but since the step was so long I opted out for four i measured the mark the location for each light on the lower riser since I had a laser it made my life a bit easier so I used that to carry the marking up to the upper riser the lights were spaced in the middle of the riser and also spaced equally apartment after the marks were placed I then drilled out a one-inch hole now that I have the one-inch hole in the fascia I need to drill a second hole this wagon passed a wire through the back of the step and land under the deck the lighting setup here is pretty straightforward but let's take a look at what I have this is the one-inch recessed deck light you can connect the light to an adapter or splitter like this one you can then use an extension cable to extend the length of the light if you have a setup like this one where the lights are close enough you can then use a six-way splitter just make sure you kept off the unused ports the six way splitter would then connect to the light hub transformer cable and that cable would then connected a transformer and finally I plugged outlet into a timer outlet which should all end up going into a GFCI outlet since this is an outdoor project here's a closer look at the one-inch recessed light that's gonna be installed in the day after feeding the wire you through the step I was able to grab Dawei from the back and then bring that closer to the connection point I repeat it is for all eight of the lights and then I pushed the lights in from the front with the light bulb at the bottom now that I have all the wires in this location I'm going to add them two splitters and mount the splitters under one of the deck boards here to wrap this up I'm going to extend the wires to the back of the deck and strap them under on the far end of the deck on the back I added a few pipes here years ago for future electric and this is a project that would definitely want to need electric for adding electric here is a huge task on its own for this phase of the project I'm gonna bring electric here by extension cord so I can fire these up and make sure everything works now I do plan to have two different types of light on a deck obviously the deck lighting but I'm also going to take some LED strips attach those together to extend around the perimeter of the deck I also picked up these clips for additional support to the LED strip while they're installed the LED strips are waterproof but the controller isn't my plan is to install the junction box on the backside of the deck where I can put all these components in it that is not designed for a direct water contact this controller has an IR receiver which allow you to control it by a remote but it also has built-in Wi-Fi this way you can control it by phone I installed the LED strip going around the entire deck not including the step and here's a quick visual of that along with the clip being installed to hold the LED in place also if you're taking on this challenge for the first time and you're new to LEDs be sure to cut the LED strip at the copper location this was my first time working with composite decking in fact this is my first time building a deck before I committed to trex decking I did a good amount of research on wood versus composite material now you can compare the upfront cost versus the overtime maintenance and then decide which one makes the most sense for you for me it was the no-brainer I knew right away that I didn't want maintenance and I just didn't want the upkeep and the responsibility that comes along with a wood deck personally I feel like I'm getting the best of both world with the realistic wood color and also the texture overall I'm pretty happy with the way the deck came out it's always exciting when you can bring a design to life I love the lights on the step although I'm still trying to warm up to the lights going around a deck or maybe I just haven't found that color I like I don't have a landscape design just yet but whenever that time comes I'll be sure to share with you guys along with an update on the deck in the meantime I'll be working on a documentation the written article plans material is the cost breakdown so be sure to check back I have links down in the video description or you could check out DIY Transcom well that is it for now I'm Glenn on DIY creators and I hope to catch you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: DIY Creators

Views: 2,752,892

Rating: 4.9069386 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, DIY Creators, building a deck for beginners, building a deck on a slope, DIY Deck, Build a deck, home improvement, frame a deck, composite decking, composite decking installation, deck framing basics, dack framing, deck diy, deck building 101, ground level deck footings, ground level deck, how to build deck, how to, how to build a deck step by step, deck building tutorial, how to build a deck by yourself, build deck

Id: Me6UX5nszrk

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Sunfuels]

I like the trick of clamping a board on the outside of the stairs to line up the first row of hidden fasteners.

Some extra info on working with composite decking. Most manufacturers add an inch or two to each board and you are supposed to cut a fraction of an inch off both ends to square and clean them up. Not sure if OP did that. So 16 foot boards are really like 16'2" and vary a bit. Prepare to cut them.

The better way to cut that angle than what OP did is get a good circular saw finish blade, clamp a straightedge onto the decking surface, and make a single cut with the circular saw. Would save a ton of time vs the sanding that OP did.

[u/strandloperza]

Saw this on OPs YouTube last week. While many loved it, there were many that said OP was clueless, deck was not properly supported and potentially dangerous. No knowledge of deck building myself so don't know what to believe.

[u/draginator]

Great looking final deck!

[u/JDub8]

Composite decks are about 3x better than regular decks. 0 splinters and you'll never burn your feet on them in the hot sun.