Hello all,
I have about a 10′ x 10′ deck and I want to add a railing to it. It’s made up of regular deck boards (5/4″ x 6″ P/T). I was thinking of a few ways to add the railing. A little background to help “visualize” – it’s a two tiered deck and I am trying to put the railing on the lower deck. It’s only about 1′ off the ground and is supported by 4 x 4’s cemented on the outside corners (4 in total). Here are my thoughts:
1 – get some type of bracketing hardware to attach a railing right to the deck board facing. I am worried this is too easy and won’t provide the strength I will need for the railing system, or
2 – try and “notch” out a 4 x 4 and a corresponding deck board and attach the “notched” 4 x 4 to the stringer underneath the deck boards. This will be more work, and I’m still not convinced that this will be strong enough.
Any other thoughts? I’m definately open to suggestions. Thanks.
Replies
I can tell you what worked and didn't work on the deck that came attached to my house. Notching the 4x4 post (no need to notch the deck boards) and lagging into the deck framing works great as long as the framing you're attaching to will resist being twisted. So if you have a doubled rim joist that should work great, or if you're lagging the post into one of the deck posts that should work even better. What doesn't work is lagging into a single-thickness joist near the middle of its span--you end up with a very flexy post. This can be fixed by adding blocking under the deck to help prevent that joist from twisting when you push on the post.
I don't have any experience with using brackets to mount posts but if you find some suitable brackets I'd make sure you're screwing them through the decking into solid framing (and/or blocking you add to the framing), not just to the decking as you're suggesting. Once you start taking into account having to remove deck boards to install blocking, the notching method starts to look more attractive...