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I want to add curved stairs to my deck, but need some advice on construction. The stairs will start at an upper level and curve through about 45 degrees of an arc to a level 30″ lower. The steps will be wedge-shaped and the rails will be made by laminating 1/2″ strips cut from 2X cedar. My problem is how to construct the stringers. Any ideas?
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Look at an old house winder stair.
They are illegal now in my code book, however.
You cannot have steps that come to a point. As I recall the narrowest point is to be no less than 6", and the tread must measure at least 9" at a point 12" in from the narrowest edge.
If you persist in construction of thi illegal and dangerous stair (walk down one with an armload of stuff and you will see why they passed out of use) make your treads rest on pie-shaped boxes.
I wouldn't put them on my deck, especially as they will be out in the weather. The winders I've walked on were bad enough without being wet or God forbid icy.
best,
DC
*There have been a number of extensive discussions on building curved stairs in the past on Breaktime. Do a search on "curve stair" or similar and you should have lots of directions and pictures to peruse. As I remember, however, these are all internal stairs and have long, sweeping curves. Perhaps you can glean something from the presented techniques for your problem, however. Here are a couple of the many:http://webx.taunton.com/Webx?128@@.ef00d02(Ok, only one - for some reason the Breaktime software keeps changing the second link I post to be the same as the first one...)
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I want to add curved stairs to my deck, but need some advice on construction. The stairs will start at an upper level and curve through about 45 degrees of an arc to a level 30" lower. The steps will be wedge-shaped and the rails will be made by laminating 1/2" strips cut from 2X cedar. My problem is how to construct the stringers. Any ideas?