How to Build a Deck with and Wheel Chair Access | Reality Renovision Ep06

I haven't run into a house hit that had square walls love working on these old homes these are my bread and butter I gotta say this floor exactly comfortable Wow wow that's actually a rain cloud hey the whole ground is even perfect every time [Music] welcome to beautiful Orleans Ontario this is a little suburb in the capital Ottawa beautiful day and a day like today is about 32 degrees all you want to do is jump in the pool and the client is invited to same but before we do that we got a lot of work to do well here we are the cedar hedge there once was a time when this was a real you know showpiece to say hey I've got a gorgeous hedge we take time manicure it and trim it but nowadays lives are too busy and people are looking for a space in the back yard where they can enjoy it without all the maintenance without all the mosquitos that come along with it so what we're gonna do is remove the hedge remove the fence and we're gonna make a new three-dimensional fence horizontally that both of the neighbors can enjoy have lots of privacy with some built-in planters and really cool features that'll give us the ability to widen up the space between the pool and then fence and make it a little wider area here so they can have a little gardening as well and just a whole lot nicer look and a lot cleaner too so we sat down with the client and started to discuss their needs and desires for the backyard and one of the things that they have is a great addition it's like it's like a large three season sunroom on the back of the house but they don't have an outdoor sitting space so they wanted to build the deck extension barbecue area and then a lower platform you can see they don't have a place where they can really enjoy next to the pool so we have to incorporate those three factors as well we have specific needs there's a wheelchair accessibility issue here so the City of Ottawa wants a second exit so we're gonna build a ramp off the backside of the deck the wraps around and comes down to join the lower section we're gonna finish it out for some railings and some aluminum spindles and it's gonna look really good it'll give them all the space in even an outdoor eating area they got a large family they love to get together outside so they got a table that seats 12 so we got to make enough seating area for everybody this is gonna be a lot of work we better get right to it [Music] well today we're going back to the Middle Ages we've constructed ourselves a little siege tool we're gonna remove a cedar hedge so two steps to this basically we're gonna take a reciprocating saw we're gonna cut down in the head leave about a foot or so of the stump and then we're gonna use this beets that we constructed here in this environment though there's a safety issue we do have a chain-link fence right next to the cedar hedge so the thought of using the chainsaw in this application was a little bit how should we say I'm gonna lose that maybe an hour of progression in the day but I don't run the risk of having that saw catch the fence and cause an injury and I'd like my arms where they are besides none everybody knew has a chainsaw is comfortable using one so the purpose of the video have these basic tools that almost everybody has at home does any kind of construction work somewhere you don't need to go to start buying new tools for every project if we can teach you how to use what you have already [Music] so let me introduce you to Holden's beast for my crazy version of it that I made this morning see your posters we're gonna go up two runs around doesn't mean that's actually lift on the whole valley look at that the whole ground is heaving as it Nate puts his weight on it so this is having the desired effect [Music] I think we got that with ya okay today we're going to be setting our fence posts we definitely get winter here usually our ground is frozen solid for at least three to four months a year and our frost line runs between three and four feet so if we were to apply any of the traditional ways of putting in a post that are found on the Internet we'd end up having our fence falling over or being lifted right up out of the ground and so we can't follow that normal way of doing things so today we're going to set the post for a four season climate what we're gonna do is we're gonna go four feet down we're gonna put concrete in the bottom of our hole we're gonna backfill with dirt there's someplace we're gonna go down okay now we got power ready [Music] okay that right there is clay get a good feel for it it's almost like play-doh in it yeah right now it's still wet but when when it happens it when it freezes all the moisture that it holds expands and this is why it's so dangerous here if you fill this concrete right to the top of this hole and all that extends is an incredible amount of force pushing up [Music] all right so the good news is we haven't run into any rocks so it's a nice clean hole the bad news is is a we ran full speed for about three seconds and we filled this thing up with all that play-doh we had to stop filming because we need to get our cameraman to give us a hand yanking this that holes done Hey sweating so more okay we've only got about another ten more to go it'll be play until we hit lava this sucker is solid clay up here in the northern climate where we got a nice hot summer in a really brutally cold winter we're used to the idea that when we build something outside it's a temporary structure and it's only gonna last 20 years if you don't done really well so we just accept the fact that we were putting in fences every 20 years maybe if you're watching this video down in Florida or Georgia you know you put it in a fence like this it's going to last longer than your house I don't know okay once you get on the other side of there when I'm using a level I'd like to use my level as long as humanly possible so I set the base in the hole and I'm basically moving this post until it's level and if I touch the line before I make it level I know I'm on an angle so I have to adjust my base position until I can move that I post and be level just as I touch the string and if I set that as my level at the ground level all the way across then when I'm installing on my fence posts I can have a string at the top and the bottom between my two points and then the rest of these posts are going real easy right there now that we've dug a hole we've got we've got water yep right one of the best advantages are living in a region like this because you can do shallow wells for your water supply for your house because the clay holds so much water you dig a hole anywhere at all you got water here's the valve of the bag if you just put your hands in there and just rip it back with all your strength oh that's good I'm glad I worked that be rather embarrassing encounter all right we are good to go and if you need to step over here a little bit that's fine too now how much water does a bag of that cement get in the hole Nate I have no idea I don't old you to read the instructions what did it say I just read the top part okay can you take a look at the bag please yeah typical man I got to read the instructions before you start front to vend understand what they're trying to communicate there's an actual chemical reaction that happening here it's releasing oxygen you can see it bubbling in the hole perfectly level leave it alone you don't even need to brace this this is how brilliant the cement is it starts setting so fast you don't even need to brace it if you want to brace it you could but you might just upset the things as they're settling so today we're building a 3d which is three dimensional horizontal fence now the reason I call a three dimensional is one that sounds sexy but two is because we're gonna be using traditionally a five quarter inch by six inch lumber going horizontal across the fence around eye level we're gonna use a two by six just to have a little bit of texture and some pop so this is the camo screwing system design for five quarter inch board by six inch you pull this up it spreads the tongs you let go and now it's attached to the board nice and simple the new system is designed for speed the old one wasn't you can only put a screw on each side now you can put a screw on both sides and you can just drive the screw right into the board there's my sweet spot of course my screws off that writing room now that gets buried on a 45 degree angle [Music] you can see how the head is completely buried so it looks like a lot of work getting it set up but once it's set up it goes in pretty quick so basically in order to finish this fence all we have to do is exactly the same thing we've just done 50 or 60 times and we should be good so today we're going to have a lot of fun it's a deck day we get to begin the project by ripping off the stairs secondly we have to prep our surface because we got permission to use deck block and and and we don't have to dig down we'll get into that a little bit later but it's gonna be pretty simple so we're building a floating deck with a basic two-tier section with a wheelchair access ramp there's a few different elements involved in that so what we're gonna have is a lot of blocks a lot of posts a lot of structure we're gonna start off with the main section of the deck here it's a 12 by 24 we're gonna do a box beam so we'll show you how to do that then we're gonna lay our floor our our stringers on top of that that all allow us how the deck boards coming straight off the house nice and easy installation big space get a few hundred square feet out of that one and then we'll have the ramp comes back and forth across there down the backside onto another platform next to the pool I'll just be one step up off the the walk around that'll give them a place to Sun and tan and be out of the dirt which is really nice first thing we're going to be pulling for landscape lockdown is we're gonna just kind of mark out the perimeter of our deck we've got our plan we just figured out our slope for a ramp which in our area is one inch for every ten inches basically weights to ten inches of rain for every inch of drop so we just worked our math backwards and we know how many feet of ramp we need so we don't need landscape cloth underneath this surface the deck we're about forty six forty eight inches off the ground we don't expect any wild weeds to germinate and come right through the floor but the other areas of the deck we're gonna get a little look closer to the ground so we're gonna put the cloth down just to make sure that we don't get any like hog weed or something like that getting a roofie coming up through the floor it's easier to maintain and when we're all done with the skirt you won't have a lot of weeds growing up against the deck we can maintain a little bit of gravel or something like that keep things real simple for maintenance limestone screening is just a leveling process we're gonna put about a half a bag down for each one of these blocks we use the tamper in a little bit of water set our block on top of that we'll put a block there as well because we're running away all I need is to try to create the level environment when you're on clay really what we're doing is creating a point load down to the clay ground if we were to dig this out and fill the hole with gravel and then put our block on it you would find that that hole would just be full of water all the time every time it rained it would actually be counterproductive because it might encourage rot if our posts got down into that ground so essentially what you're looking at here is a box beam we've just got it laid out we still have to lift it up into position now it's a great job to do is two-man operation if you had to do it alone you could so because we're building our deck for with a wheelchair accessibility the ideas bring our deck surface as close to the sill plate as we can [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the only thing we don't have control over it now is the lateral movement yeah alright so we want to get as close as we possibly can once all three of them are done we can put a stretch of board across we can make any fine-tune adjustments at that point then we're gonna drill our holes with our half inch galvanized bolt nuts washers tag those bad boys on we got structure so I'm using this other piece of structural number 2 duck no level of isola can't carry the weight of that for a second stay still remember you don't want to wreck my level it's so heavy [Music] okay that's good with one hand and pulled this thing from falling over the other hand you hold the beam it's only 20 pounds you'd be fine yeah all right all right all right so there's our box beam so attacking a couple of warriors cross-brace this bad boy [Music] you got it yeah [Music] okay so right now we basically got our box beams installed this is for the upper level of the deck the deck is going to come off the door follow an angle kind of facing the pool there'll be a barbecue area and then it's going to change direction the stairs will come off over here so what we have is basically three big beams that'll carries and transports all of our load once we've drilled our galvanized bolts we're gonna do two for each beam that'll transfer approximately 6,000 pounds to the ground on each one of these beams if they have a party that exceeds that I want to be there so we're not worried about it structural speaking structural number all delivered aside now we're ready to roll so we've finished drilling a bunch of these 1/2 inch galvanized bolts in [Music] so this might seem like it takes a little bit of extra time might be arduous but a thirty dollar drill bit which is exactly the same size as our galvanized bolts and if you go too fast it'll shear right in half from overheating that's why it's necessary to take it in and out and clean the wood out of the out of that bit as you go [Music] make it look so majestic that's my job to make it [Music] the last step for this is really we want to plate these nuts we want to create as much compression as we can so that things aren't moving around now we're dealing with a softwood lumber here so although that feels pretty tight we're gonna go for compressed take a little bit of work alright so once you have everything tightened you're ready to start laying your floor joists package with a triple box beam like this we're using the middle beam as kind of our midpoint so we're gonna be attaching our joists every 16 inches on center the secret here is that we're gonna offset the joists so that I can attach them to this ridge plate from each side and have one of these running down the middle now all of these joists will be sitting on one of these two by tens so that I transfer the load which will work out really really well [Music] little note when you're working with 2x6 it's one fastener for every two inches of lumber and the number six divided by two is three make sure you do it when your inspector comes by he won't pass you so for this particular project we're using the Sienna Brown pressure-treated you still have the green on the market and certain suppliers but this one looks a lot more like cedar I start soft brown been a week or two of fading in the Sun you'll never know the difference so now we're going we're just getting all of our joists run once we have our joists run and the other rim joists on we're gonna square it off to the building once that's squared off and then we can start measuring out to where our ramp locations are and cut this lumber to size according to our schematic for building a ramp off of a platform over in that corner okay so now that we've got our basic structure in place we've got this side all screwed down I got the corners pinned we're not too concerned about what's going on over there because that's all going to get custom cut we're gonna change the angle so we're just leaving it in place resting on the beams for now I'm gonna very little talk with a client will map out the final design in a minute we have to do is get this all squared off before we can measure off the rest the deck because the whole deck is built off the idea that we're coming square off the wall right down the middle on this box beam so we mark off our sixth wheel we marked off our eight foot now Nate the leading edge with the numbers that corner goes on the outside part of that board kind of go like that way Nate go like the sideways okay okay now look at this I am way out of square all right you can see I'm about an inch shy of square so what I do is I grab this board and I'm gonna pull it all towards me until my pencil mark and this 10 line up somewhere around here so let's try that set it up again yep well only a half an inch one more good shot try that BAM [Music] there we go now this won't slide around out of position this is Gerren to be squared off the house this is going to be straight off the house so now the rest of our dimensions can be measured off this room dress okay 95 and like the legit 160 [Music] all right well that's actually a rain cloud [Music] so last time we were visiting we were working on the platform of the upper section of the deck so now this section is basically finished we have a design element we're going to walk through with the client with once we get the rest of the structure done they're just going to put a little angle on it to kind of mimic the pool it'll be nice look for barbecue area but basically what we've done is today we worked on the wheelchair accessibility ramp so they have the platform there that's what all these posts are in the background we haven't left them off and finish that yet but before we can finish our deck in our ramp we really need to get this platform here finished so right now we're laying on our landscape cloth we've got a simple design we're just using building materials right off the shelf ten-foot lumber 24 feet long just a great big rectangle we're gonna put a little bit of structural support underneath so when it's done top and bottom a nice load transfer get rid of the bounce and then we'll be able to line up for where our stairs and where our ramp ends and that should be just about it well then we got a call for inspection here's the interesting thing the city didn't want us to drill into the ground because if we went into the ground to put our piers we had to have these 24 by 24 footings five feet deep it seemed excessive to dig out the entire backyard and then put all the dirt back again so they said well because it's in a wheelchair ramp we'll let you do a floating deck so we weighed out the options we had about a $40,000 excavation or floating deck the clients agreed that the floating deck seemed a little bit more practical so we're not sure why it was one extreme or the other but kind of went from one ditch of crazy cost to the other ditch of we'd all feel better having this in the ground but because we're on clay the end of the day we're not attaching to the house so as long as there's a free-standing structure being on the surface is okay with me if it's okay with the city as my son alluded to earlier basically what we're doing is we're making a giant wall take except we're not gonna lift it up into a wall we're gonna just leave it on the ground the trick here is that's good actually the trick here is to just level it all off so because we're working straight off with the deck it's settled a little bit we did some shimming we have the rim joist there all taken care of so here we're gonna have to use a deck block because we have some nice slope on the ground we're gonna use a 2x8 on this side because that'll actually transfer the load a lot better over a larger gap I think that'll work pretty good there Nate let's give it a shot a little bit of trial and error here we need to get the deck block in place let's see we got so that's perfect and upper here that says another [Music] we're doing a ground-level structure here so now we've got an issue because the ground isn't flat what can't is lay it on the ground so over here at this point instead of adding three or four backs of limestone screenings we're going to just use the post in the block attach a couple screws now we've got a level structure now we're going to finish this off it's gonna be very much like the deck and the box beam structure will drill a half inch hole she's got some galvanized bolt and nut and washer assembly and that will transfer all the load that this is carrying into this post through the block through this onto the clay and now restructure this four by four by eight so I just tighten this by hand and then I grab a wrench then I just make sure that I take this washer and kind of seep it into this wood to make sure that it's not going anywhere so when you're doing your structure and we're leveling things up or throw in a quick screw in the screw is just there to set the wood until such time that you drill the hole and put in galvanized bolt so right now I'm just putting these joists in position setting it with a screw we're gonna actually attach the joist hangers after we're done setting all this up putting these joist hangers just on the top of the wood so when I go by and I screw them in its really easy okay it's up guy know you're learning the hard way maybe this will make up for my mistakes last time on panel but you can see by the speed that he's putting this in just about anybody could install it and doesn't matter how good or you are with a hammer it was definitely definitely not a shout out you know mr. opportunity that is coming on the boat is sail BAM the reason we're going with this lumber is a it's economical B we're using our camel screw system and so we're going to be coming in from the sides where every 16 inches on center this is more than strong enough we're not going to have any issues with a feeling too lightweight or too much movement we've added some structural support underneath the deck they keep the floor joists from moving around and transfer some load so it'll feel really stable remember this is going in on an angle you drive that drill bit right into the cradle and that's that's the perfect depth every time [Music] [Applause] [Music] compared to other systems that have no screws on the surface it's incredibly fast you're like go get the camera screws I'm like I can't find them using their camouflage because their camouflage it's easy yeah especially forgot this is my age and uh and I've only been doing this for like a year like a junior junior typing [Laughter] juniors a third so now we have the surface part deck covered where you have to prep for our picture frame [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're in good shape there does that seem legit not like it you can see that fence that we were working on in the background we're almost on the neighbor side and now on his side it's almost 10 feet tall because we had to build a retaining wall more filling in with gravel so we can extend the patio stone okay yeah as long as there's let me use your pencil we'll keep going this way [Music] I'm gonna be cutting the wood so we've got a compact miter saw I'm Darrin miter saw whatever it is compound [Music] [Applause] [Music] first I want you to put that to 45 and a half degrees 45 and a half the bottom is gonna want to lock in 45 yep lock it in okay now I cut that bad boy and let's confirm the angle [Music] how's that look to you I'd say 45 now cut just a hair to the right of that first cut line okay okay sensei go how's that one look how looks a lot better okay you can see when we're doing this kind of work you can expect that you're gonna need an opportunity to make a second or third try so this is why we're working with wood that hasn't been cut to the right length yet and when we're working with our angles were on the other side of a pencil I want to make sure we get the angle just perfect before we you know cut the wood and get rid of all of our options that are available and we're gonna use traditional streets for this we're gonna get it started what I like to call cauterizing the wound so when I'm screwing down my picture frames I'm still using this kind of screw the camo screw is marvelous going right into I'm gonna just go in a bit of an angle right into my my room joists underneath then go flush plus a quarter now when this wood swells up a couple of rainstorms later that hole will just be grown over you'll never see it again well that concludes our picture frame technique for the deck really happy with how it's going so far I mean it's been a long hot day today 30 plus degrees and we've got to boat 107 280 square feet of flooring down here that's good I think overall it's starting to come together just like I envisioned it it's come a long way from just a scratch note on the pad for our permit to come into life two or three more days we should have all of the deck surface down and then working on the railings so we're looking forward to getting the glass up and looking forward to client coming home and see what their opinion is to so now we've got our decking going on on one of the platforms we've started some of the decking on our ramp so right now we'll start with just hanging a skirt board [Music] start her up so these handrails require a banister one of these little spindle things our code in our region we can't have a gap more than three inches so we have to use you know a few hundred of these plenty of things all right again we want to burn that screw before we drive it suppose [Music] we double-check their paperwork former city they gave us design specifications for what's an acceptable installation and where we are they want two screws in the bottom rail one on the top don't ask me why but that's what we're gonna give them so now we're gonna deal with the stairs this is my framing square now I'm not a framing expert but I have used these little things before and these are just great little dials they attach to the to the square okay they just screw on you can adjust them now I'm going to use five stringers I like my savers would be really extra solid I don't like week steps there's nothing worse than when you're going up a flight of stairs and you feel like you might fall through so we're gonna go a little overkill our stairs are six feet wide I'm going with five stringers that should be plenty we're gonna use solid inch and a quarter deck board on them so when it's all screwed together we'll have a little bit of back support and then we'll drop it into place [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh Andy all right [Music] with signals all right so now we've got all of our stair stringers tacked into place the outside is screwed together you can see what we did is we've continued on with our skirt looking behind where the stairs are gonna go this is gonna be important because we're doing picture frame deck similar to the other level this here is going to come out about an inch and a quarter will be a nosing so this acts like its own riser I think it's just going to give it a really nice clean look I'm going to bring it all around [Music] okay so once you have it all assembled you just lift it into place and I need my drill [Music] now I've got this corner tacked in I'm checking my level and I want to be off just a little bit here stares at our level they're nice for stairs I have a 1 degree incline towards the stair is really sweet if there's ever any movement with this deck it gives me a little bit of mercy you never want to go down a set of stairs that are throwing you forward so having them leaning into a little bit it's never a problem there we go right so once we have our stairs in place it's just our basic frame ok so we'd have a 2 by 6 riser across the front it'd be screwed in from all different directions that means it also has to be blocked from here across okay and then after we're done with that we just cut our floorboards and I'm gonna go about an inch past the stringer on each side so that I can bring my skirt boards all up the sides okay I'll do a little back framing there's some two by fours screw the skirt in top and bottom close off that area for animals and then that'll be the finish with this one here we'll end up drawing the size of this post we'll cut it out with a hole saw and a jigsaw and then we would just lift it up and slide it over our posts and slide it down and that would be it I'm gonna just stairs and risers all the way close it up and then we're finished so this was a massive project that had a lot of elements involved we have the original design we have design changes we have the City of Ottawa had some structural changes I had to bring in a designer to do some of the finishing touches engineers to engineer our glass railing forests so there's a lot involved plus is the hottest summer in our record in our area so we were exhausted on every day so five weeks later it's all completed we're really happy we have every element that we wanted the clients are super happy we've incorporated three new planter boxes so ones over on the fence just to give it a little bit of that 3d detail that we were looking for we also have LED lights on that fence so at night it's absolutely beautiful it's solar powered LED lighting great accent lights we also added a couple of planter boxes at the far end those are going to be designed it's a stand-up gardening center so basically it's framed chicken wire landscape cloth they can put vegetable garden or just regular flowers in there it doesn't involve any bending over and so it's just a great natural separation between the pump equipment for the pool and the sitting area so this is our wheelchair access ramp so that we can have our client go from the upper area right down to poolside it's a nice low slope it's one inch for every 12 inches it's engineered just wide enough to get them in around is a little tricky because we do have a property line and we have bylaws zoning issues we've got a four foot separation from fence to deck that we had to maintain so it's a little bit tight but he's able to navigate it quite comfortable it would have been nice if we had a little more space but when you have a permit to build something the city gives you your list of rules and regulations and you got to stay inside that parameter so when we were first talking about the project the idea was to have a handrail up and down the and the lower part of the deck isn't two feet off the ground so there was no need for a railing but as we got going and it started taking shape I think visually the client started to get more excited about you know enhancing the process so what they decided was time for some glass railing so what we've done is covered everything in glass we have it engineered so we don't have any of that aluminum capping it's just all solid wooden glass we're all good to go beautiful so originally we just had a little set of stairs right off the back of the house and this isn't actually in addition to the home it's like a Sun porch area and the client had outdoor storage underneath well with the addition of this deck what we had to do is add a little bit of hidden storage so now everybody has access to all their stuff underneath the deck just set of underneath the house when designing an outdoor living space you have to keep in mind a couple of major factors a what you're going to use the space for and B where are the traffic lights so on this deck we have a door to the stairs and the barbecue area is set up beside it then we have a sitting area in a table area to the other side of it we have to maintain traffic space for the wheelchair ramp we also had to maintain the ability for when the chair came off the ramp was on level ground that it wasn't entering right into the bottom of the stairs you don't want to have a situation where someone's coming in a chair and someone's coming down the stairs and you don't have the ability to stop because you're gonna have an accident so there's actually a code regarding this so this is why we have this little adjustment here this was not in the original plan we had to add that in now we've got this beautiful sitting area over here as well behind us and now we've because we got rid of that cedar hedge now we've got a beautiful sitting area on the other side of the pool so you can pick do you want to sit in the shade you want to sit in the Sun different time of day you've got all the freedom in the world to choose wherever you're most happy overall we are super excited about the product I'm happy the clients happy couldn't have done a better job if we had the rest of the summer to finish so if you'd like to see our YouTube videos on this project we broke it down into seven steps for you right from the beginning the design the layout the framing right through to the very finishing touches so by all means go and check that out should be enough information there that anybody whose ain't comfortable with tools can do something like this on their own aside from the project video we also have elements of the video you know how to remove the cedar hedge we have a video on how to drill into the clay soil in our area really tricky but doable with the two-man auger we also have on our channel how-to videos for just about anything you can imagine so by all means so take a look at our channel subscribe to the channel send us some feedback love to hear your comments love to know what it is that you'd like to see we're doing different projects all the time so if there's something that specific that you want to know about send us a message we'll be happy to put a video together well thanks for joining us today and if you'd like to see the projects that we're doing in the future hit the subscribe button so you notified every time we have a new video or check out the link over here and you can check out some of our past projects while you're making that decision I gotta find a new color [Music]

Channel: REALITY RENOVISION

Views: 156,554

Keywords: home renovision, home renovision diy, reality renovision, jeff thorman, wheelchair ramp, wheelchair deck, deck with ramp, deck with wheelchair ramp, reality tv, diy tv, renovation reality show, hgtv, holmes on homes, how to build a deck, diy deck build, diy deck, how to make a deck, poolside deck, luxury deck, poolside deck build, canada deck build, ground level deck, deck railings, deck stairs, deck blocks, how to build a fence, cedar hedge removal, cedar deck

Id: o3-WW1-PyuY

Length: 40min 31sec (2431 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019