Majority of townships use the DCA6 , American wood council for deck construction. I read the whole thing and at the end I scratched my head. At times I believe it’s clarity can be improved in explaining. I used AUTO desk to do some quick detail drawings but I must say using concrete piers for stair stringers is a little on the extreme side. I dug into it more by using Google to see what others are doing. For example, take a set of stairs 4 foot wide. Obviously you have to drill or dig up to 46 inches. Now look at offset distance between those 2 pier footings. Not much meat in between. Basically you are better off justing excavating a square. Yes, I understand a deck needs to be sturdy. I don’t see anything wrong with a rectangular concrete slab of 6 inches to secure your stringers to. It’s odd because the boroughs emphasize using the DCA6 guide but if I drive around town I’m guaranteed to find a few stairs resting on concrete walkways or slabs.
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Where did you come up with the 46" dimension for the piers? This is excessive. I can't imagine any standard specs calling for this.https://www.decksgo.com/deck-stair-footings.html
Northern climate. I agree, 46 is excessive. Still trying to confirm what the minimum is. Waiting on reply.
That's a good question. Mike Guertin's article (https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/decks/mounting-deck-stairs) addresses it. In my own opinion, requiring frost footings for deck stairs is excessive. I think that if you were to build a free-standing deck (no frost footings required for the deck in that case), there would be no requirement for frost-footings at the stairs either. Also, I have found that it varies with the jurisdiction. A lot of the old-school inspectors in my area would look at me like I was crazy for installing frost footings under a stair.