Quick Tip: How To Square Up A Deck || Dr Decks

[Music] hey guys dr dex here today i wanted to talk to you about a question i keep getting uh from some of the newer builders out there and even some pros is dr doctor how do you square up a deck so i thought i would show you guys a couple different techniques on how we do it and then you can uh take your pick and maybe learn a little something today if you do don't forget to click that subscribe button and hit that bell icon to be notified every time we're putting out new content okay all right let's go all right so what i have here is i have a the end of the deck the deck ends over here see that all the joists are run wild right now what i want to do is i'm trying to figure out where to cut that because this is where i'm going to start laying my first deck board over here so what i'm doing is my deck run over here is a little over 20 feet so i took it a really nice straight 20-foot 2x6 and i laid it on the deck and then unfortunately there's a lot of vents on the side of this house there's a septic thing in the way all these wires and and piping and all this stuff's in my way i'm using a fold out square this square is made by stanley now i've had this question a jillion i mean a jillion times okay so here you go i've had mine for a minute i don't even know what this says but i think it says stanley folding square okay i actually value this square so much i wrote stabila on it so people would stop stepping on it okay so it's a stabila and stanley's clothing so don't step on my stabila so you can see the arrow right here that's how you open this thing up so you can't if you open it this way it's not going to work you got to open it like the arrow says all right and we actually have two different versions of this this is a true 45 version and i have another version that's more like a three four five i'm sure how many of you have heard about a three four five before i'll go over that in a minute but if that's another way to square up a deck you measure three feet one way four feet the other way and then the diagonal is should be at five feet we'll double check this with that technique once i show you how to do this all right but i have this this is like cheating okay this is a great tool it's probably 50 bucks i think i got mine at mclendon hardware you can check them out online i suppose they're i think they're a local hardware chain all you east coasters i'm sure there's somebody else that carries these things man but i don't know whatever all right so what i did is i took since i have so much garbage on the house i took another straight board and i i'm doing an average okay i'm just averaging out what i think square is because i'm up against all these pipes and all this other stuff but what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my square i'm going to put it up against my average board and then i'm going to run it up to this 2x6 and you can see i've got a gap here i've got a gap here and i'm tight over here so that means i got to move this board that way a little bit to try and average this out to square so i'm going to move it a little i'm just going to take my square until i like the way this looks wow that looks pretty good okay most guys use a speed square to do this oh that looks that looks good yeah we're square uh no don't do that all right so now just to double check my method okay let's go we're gonna measure from from this point three feet this way put a mark on the board okay i'm gonna measure four feet this way put a mark on this board and then when i measure that mark to this mark i should have five feet not bad i know now that this deck is this this line of this board is square okay so some of you are asking come on doctor that two by six ain't straight so it's not perfect well i'm not gonna go by and i'm not going to mark the board what i'm going to do i'm going to mark this end of this joist and i'm going to mark the far end of the far joist i'm going to chalk a line and then that's what i'm committed to that board is going to be fairly square to the deck i'm i'm pretty sure it's very accurate and this is for me the most accurate way you could use a string line but that's what a chalk line is basically strings can be really accurate but what i found is this two by six method or any flat straight board works pretty good as well it's going to get us in the zone in the neighborhood we're going to be super close to what we need so i hope that helps you guys i hope that explains a little bit and hopes you give you a little bit of understanding even how you can square something up and you don't have a straight area you can make one and then square off of that it'll get you very close to where you need to be if i'm still concerned i could take this square i could pull it out on some joists that maybe i have ran and i could check it and man in my opinion like that's cash okay so even even when i pulled out two feet from the house on the joists that i've already ran it's square as well normally i always try to square off a foundation of the house or the first layer but i don't like to square off siding too much because i found siding is not very accurate it's usually wavy like this okay so that's why it's always nice to get something else that's straight that you trust that's all i got for you today guys if you like what you saw don't forget to click that subscribe button and hit that bell icon to be notified when we're putting out fresh content thanks for watching don't forget to comment below and like our videos share them around give them as christmas presents to all your friends christmas is coming soon so you know don't forget to click subscribe thanks for watching have a great day

Channel: drdecks

Views: 19,069

Rating: 4.8774619 out of 5

Keywords: Dr decks, drdecks, deck building, custom decks, pacific northwest, carpentry, decks, deck, deck board bending

Id: NadW7SQlnvo

Length: 6min 43sec (403 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2020