Preference In The Way Your Decking Boards Turn

jcalvin

How do you like to turn your decking boards? I personally like to have all of my deck board start at the house and end on the outside of the deck. I HATE butting decking boards together. It is fine for a while, then they always seem to start bucking up leaving a toe breaker. I have personally never done this but I have seen several this way. I feel like I am loosing jobs because of the obvious cost difference in doing this. I am considering starting to change the way I build them for tight budgeted customers so I can be more competative to the guys that do this. If you butt join your decking boards together, how do you do it to achieve a long lasting professional finish?

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DecksEtc

What way?

jcalvin

I have personally never built a deck in a manner that requires butt joining. To be more specific, the ones that I see that I don't like has two decking boards that have to share a joist to rest on. This gives each decking board a bearing point of only 3/4". Plus, don't you have to keep you saw out to cut each board to fit squarely. This sounds labor intensive to me.

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Five Star

back in the day we used to splice the but joints,but with this new growth lumber there is way to much shrinkage!

now i usually double the joist where i intend to make my splices one on each side of the deck and stager every other one on the seams. this cost aliitle more for the 2-4 joist that you double but after all said and done you fly through the decking.

if your really want to penny pinch you can add 2x4s to where you intend to butt joint.

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Five Star

here is a cheaper way...but i prefer to double the joist

Attached Images

 

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jcalvin

When I get home, I will draw a pic of the joist layout I use and what I am thinking of going to. I don't have capabilities to draw here and they are limited at home.

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knucklehead

That all depends on the size of the deck you are building doesn't it? I would venture to say if it is a big deck the there is no way you can avoid having a butt joint

BuiltByMAC

jcalvin, you're talking about running the deck boards perpendicular to the house wall, yes? That way, you can have a 20' deep deck run the full length of a house w/o any butt joints.

Beside the two ways 5 Star showed how to handle butt joints, you can also run a seam board to break up a deck. I don't usually build butt joints into my decks but I rarely run boards perpendicular to the house either.

Or you can run your boards at a 45º angle to the house...

lotsa options -

Mac

mnjconstruction

what are we talking about......... I'm lost

Five Star

thats a good way too with a seam board but i got the impression he was doing low tech deck but wanted strong outcome for his butt joints. to compete with his competitors.

my decks i dont mind spending on a few extra boards to get rid of stagered butt joints. i always add misc to my estimates it all in the cost of the material

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IHI

I like running my boards parallel to the house, but there are other factors pending layout like anything else, but depending on the width of the deck we know put in "relief" boards so to speak, meaning if the deck is 20' wide, i'll break in in half so i'm only using 10' decking boards running parallel to the house and the center of the deck will have 3 deck boards perpendicular to the house to break the span. like mentioned, there is just faar to much shrinkage in this junk wood anymore to try and do butt end on PT decking.

Plus the break adds character and i'm yet to have one client that does'nt get all giddy over something as stupidly simple as this transition break "oh that looks soo cool, i like how that is seperated like that", etc.....

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jcalvin

My sketch is coming in bigger than what i can post. So I am going to try to explain. When I get a deck that is longer than 12', I turn my floor joist parellel to the house having to use double header blah blah blah to avoid a butt joint. When you figure in the extra 2x10+ material, I think that is knocking my price out of the "low price" according to the HO. What my question is, is it cheaper and less time consuming to run all the floor joist perpendicular to the house thus creating a situation for butt joints. The deck I am trying to get right now is a 10x32. I like breaking up the joints with a 2x2. Sounds feasable. I have always been able to turn the floor joists parallel to the house in the past but am worried I am loosing jobs because of it.

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WarnerConstInc.

Just use less finish nails in your spindles and then you can afford to buy a few more 2x10's.

neolitic

When the runs are too long
for a single board, and breakers,
herringbone, or diagonal isn't an
option I do a 30º scarp joint.
Never made a butt joint on a deck.

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jcalvin

I was afraid that was coming. But I deserved it.

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IHI

Why using 2x10 for a 10' deck? 2x8 are fine depending on how your building your base which i hope is joist on beam construction?

why cant you use a breaker board, as simple as this:


Just picture frame the perimeter, split it into 3- roughly 10' chunks with 2 breaker boards running perpendicular to the house and boom, done. minimal shrinkage, looks nice, happy homies, and easy as pie to do.
One other reason i gave up trying to do butt joints, i'm yet to see any of the PT decking be the exact same width or thickness so when trying to do herring bone, 45's, and butt joints it does'nt work out..the only time i'll do design work like that is with composities.

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neolitic

Gorgeous curves!
Did you use a heat blanket?
That is rel Hollywood shtuff there.

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IHI

Actually i used google images to get a fast picture instead of beating my head trying to explain breaker boards to get away from butt joints sadly the typical poor economy around here, i personally have only done 2 projects with radiuses, both were PT decking and the one i threw the radius across the front on my own dime to spice it up a bit since like most of us am so burnt out doing the same rudy poo project over and over and over, i'm now doing little things here and there for my own sanity but i'm yet to see a PT worth taking pictures of/being proud of..just too run of the mill no matter how you build them

Composites, i've only ever used Correct Deck CX, after talking with a few guys on here behind the scene, reading on deck forums i just saw no reason for us to go through a learning curve using products other's have tried and then moved away from, so we jumped right into the CD products. And sadly we've only done 4 projects with it since the price scares so many people away they all say, "we dont want anything fancy, just something better than what we have" which we all know means, i want as much as possible for as little as possible

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neolitic

I hear you.
I'd love to do a CDX, only been
able to get a couple of Azek redecks.
Last one started out an Azek
Cadillac, wound up 5/4 cedar,
and I threw in diagonal layout
to keep from boring myself.

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knucklehead

Probably not the answer you are looking for ,but I think it would be not only cheaper but better structurally. Even if you put a "breaker" in there don't you still have butt joints?