Decking my garden

telsokari

Hi there,

I have a concrete patio in my garden which rougly 5 meters by 3 meters. After getting a few quotes of about £1600 and up i have decided to try and go it myself.

I was wondering other than raising the wooden joists onto slabs for water and air circulation and leaving a gap between the deck and the outside wall of the house, is there anything else i should make sure i do and dont do?

Also, would it be ok to build the deck ontop of the concrete without the need to digging into the patio? I would either attach it to the house with the spacing washers or to the concrete floor below.

Also, has anyone recently used e-deck.com or do you recommend any other places to get it from?

I'm planning on trying to get it done over next weekend. Have taken Thursday and Friday off work for it as well

Thanks

ormus

i doubt you will need to fix it anywhere, itll be heavy enough to stand still and stay put.

n90bar

Ive recently ordered and built decking. I used e-decks - generally good (materials certainly!) but I did have to wait 5 weeks for the joist delivery as it was a bank holiday and they only deliver to my area (West Dorset) every second Monday!

kaya

i did mine last year, 3mx5m, i put the joists straight onto the concrete, didnt fix it to anything and its still there, we got our stuff from wickes (they were doing a promo on decking at the time) , cost us just under £500 if i remember correctly, if your doing a diy then wickes do 5m long deck boards, makes the job much easier than messing about with smaller boards

OK_Sauce

I finished mine a few weeks ago. I got all the information about how to do it from this website

ULTIMATE HANDYMAN

27col

I've done two decking areas over existing patios. Neither of them has moved in the slightest. As ormus says, the weight soon builds up into a large amount and movement is unlikley. If you want to be certain, then just lift a couple of slabs and concrete a couple of uprights into the ground using post mix. They do not need to be very deep. If you want to be sure of getting it level. Build the frame, prop it up level and then screw or bolt short uprights vertically from the frame to rest on the patio slabs. This is an easy method to do as it can easily cope with an uneven old patio area. I have used this method three times now, twice on decking and once to level an area of sloping concrete to provide a level base for a large shed.