Building Strong Deck Stairs

[Music] it's important to think about how we're gonna connect our stairway to the deck frame because a lot of ways that contractors often attach them don't take into consideration the loads that the stairs themselves and people walking up and down on them put on the deck frame and components that aren't designed to handle those loads like the rim joist is it connected properly and if you have an overhang is that overhang but calculated to handle that extra load from those stairs or if you're at the end Joy's is that a single joist and is that factored in for that load that's going to be on that or is it a double or a triple so if you're not considering all of those things and actually having an engineer perhaps involved in doing those calculations you might want to consider what I do which is providing an independent support system for the deck stairs and that way you don't have to worry about whether you're connecting at this end of the deck or that end of the deck and what the framing is regarding the structural capacity of it so the way I approach it is I start out with some 4x4 6x6 guardrail post but instead of terminating those at the bottom of the rim joist I'm gonna let those go all the way down to some footings that go down into the ground and have some posts - footing connectors down there then I'm going to attach that to the rim joist on both sides then down here I'm gonna put a header and the header is just a single ply headboard which is gonna back up those stringers that's gonna carry the load transfer it into these posts and down to those footings putting no load on the rim joist or the end joist on your deck the headboard ends up getting screwed into those posts with some structural screws much like when we put a ledger on the end of the house now you'll notice over here where I've extended this headboard out at about 3 inches that's important we're going to use stringer connector Hardware this stringer connector Hardware needs to have at least three inches of wood past the end of the stringer in order to be structurally sound to have enough would to secure it without splitting out the wood because we're going to put a lot of screws or nails into this Hardware now the way this works is there are nails holes drilled in already from the manufacturer we're going to want to fill those with either nails or screws into the headboard and the height on that is going to depend on the stringer and riser configuration then there are some flanges on the sides that take a pair of nails each into the side of the stringer on the riser side and on the under sloping side of the stringer then on the bottom you'll notice there's a whole series of holes those are only there so that you can reverse this stringer hardware to the left or to the right you don't have to fill those holes they aren't critically important you only need one nail or one screw from the bottom of that hardware into the stringer and then you've got a good solid connection the guardrail posts that the bottom stair stringers are often kind of weak and wobbly I like to make sure they're as secure as possible so that people don't feel unsettled as they're walking up and down the stairway holding onto the handrail of the guardrail so a way I approach it is by putting in some blocking and some structural screws along with some metal hardware to tie everything together along the front of this assembly so it works in unison as one unit so I start by installing blocking with some structural screws long structural screws that go from stringer to stringer all the way at the backside of where those posts are going to be positioned then I'm gonna take and install some hardware that's gonna mount to that block and bolt all the way through to the outside of that stringer on the outside of the post that way we're getting some continuity between the outside stringer through the posts to the block and through the rest of the assembly now there's one of these brackets on the other post as well then I'm gonna finish this whole thing off with some more structural screws and blocks in line with the front of the stringers that's going to not only secure the front of the stringer so they don't get knocked off when you put the tread on and the riser on but it's also going to give you a lot more structural capacity making this whole thing work as one box unit once this is done this doesn't move at all it's almost rocks solid the one thing you have to remember though in order for it to be rock-solid is you've got to have a good concrete footing underneath this whole assembly with a nice landing and then anchor these stringers down to that and you can do that by using a 2x4 or 2x6 that you use some anchor bolts down into that hooding when you pull on this post it doesn't lift the other side up [Music]

Channel: finehomebuilding

Views: 471,649

Rating: 4.8672161 out of 5

Keywords: Shop Class, Critical Deck Connections, FineHomebuilding.com, framing, deck framing, stairs, stair framing, steps, remodeling, construction, house

Id: 5TPihkFJopk

Length: 4min 49sec (289 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019