23 VIDEO SPACED DECK BOARD END DETAILS

In this video I want to talk to you about gaps between the ends of deck boards

and how that works into the style and the longevity of the deck as well

So just come over here and you can see that wherever one deck board has stopped

and another has started, there's a little bit of a gap. You can see gaps there

Wherever on the deck you see boards meeting, that's what you have

There's a gap there. There's also a gap in here. Now this is a synthetic deck material

It's Trex and the reason I'm separating the boards is not because the boards

are going to rot, which is the reason that I would separate boards on the ends

with a wooden deck top. The reason you do it with a composite material like

this is because it expands and contracts a fair amount with changes in

temperature. So from the cold depths of winter to a really hot day with the

sun shining on it, the south side over here, there needs to be room for the

deck boards to get larger without running into their neighbor and buckling up and causing problems. In the case of a wooden deck top, the wood

doesn't expand and contract appreciably with changes in temperature, but you do

want to have that space so that the wood won't remain wet for long periods of

time. It's a very vulnerable spot on the ends of deck boards because there's

tubes in the wood, tubes that used to transport the sap and that will cause

the water to wick up into the wood and cause quite premature rotting

So those are the reasons for doing it and I want to show you another little fine

point of getting the details right and then how you make this sort of gap and

separation possible in the under structure of a deck. So one of the

important things to remember with these end gaps, and this applies to whether

you're working with synthetic or wood decking material, is that the value of

chamfering the edges. So chamfering refers to this angled cut that's on here

This happens to be in a composite so we can see some of the lighter substrate

underneath. I'm going to be going over this with some stain later. It's very

quite absorbent so it's going to soak that up and get to be the same

color but I've left it like this now so you can see what a chamfer looks like

It looks much nicer than if I had just put square edged boards down. It also

serves to camouflage any mismatch. Sometimes there can be slight differences in the height of one board to the other especially when you realize

that under the majority of these deck boards there are two joists side by side

That's how this gap is possible and one joist can be a little different in

height than another. But the chamfer camouflages any mismatch like this. In

the case of a wooden deck surface a chamfered edge holds on to the deck

stain, the deck finish, much better than a crisp square edge because on a crisp

square edge right there at the corner the finish film gets very thin. Even when

it's wet it kind of moves away from that. So that's the area where you're going to have the first deterioration of your finish on a wood deck and chamfering

helps to solve that problem. So you make the chamfer with a little tool like this

called a router. This is a handheld router one horsepower. It's just perfect

for this kind of light work and this is the chamfering bit. It's just a straight

angled bit and this this bearing here rides up against the edge of the deck

lumber and it cuts this angled edge depending on how far it's sticking out

So if I want a deeper edge I'll just loosen this and crank down the base and

you can see that will be way too much chamfer of course for the edge of a deck board. But that's how you change the width of a chamfer that you're using a

router to create. You want to take your best guess at what the proper depth is

and then try this out on some scrap till you get it right and then you

just leave your setting the same the whole time on the router. Now just before

I finish up I want to take and show you some double joists in action. What they

look like from underneath the deck. So here you can see two different examples

of the double joist arrangement. Here's kind of what I call the regular one

So it's about three quarters of an inch or not quite an inch apart and I

located this where I knew the deck boards were going to end. It provides..

it lets me separate the deck boards because I could not put two deck boards

on one joist and have any meaningful separation between them and besides it

would trap water too between them without the opportunity for the water to drain downwards. Now over on the corner of the deck here you can see a similar

sort of arrangement. There's the space. The only difference is that this is an

angled arrangement because the deck here is wrapping around the corner of a

house. It's a 45 degree, a 90 degree turn so these are 45 degree angles and you

can see the space here. I've put some spacers of pressure treated plywood in

between there because it's fairly long and I wanted, I didn't want the

joists to bow outwards. You'll also see these joist hangers I've used here. It's

one of the few places I've used joist hangers on this deck but very heavy, hot

dip galvanized. This deck has been here for more than 20 years, 22 years I think

and it's essentially exactly the same as the day I built it. Everything's working

fine. The drainage techniques are working well and this double joist business is part of that