Stairs
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Stairs
- Stair Sets: 2 sets. One 6' stairway centered on end of deck and one 4' stairway on side of deck closest to house entrance.
- Stair Lumber: Treads used 2X6 boards and risers used 1X6 boards.
- Stair Design: Both stairways have 4 step stringers and the deck floor makes the 5th step.
- Stringer attachment: All stringers attached to rim joist/stringer extension using L30 brackets.
- Ground contact: 6X6 posts are embedded in ground for stringer pads for the stairways. Stringers are attached to pad with angle brackets and screws.
- Stringer extensions: Both stairways required stringer extensions (See all the bolts in the picture to the left? That is the stringer extension). These extensions allowed the stringers to have full contact with the rim joist. The extensions were made up of a doubled up 2X4 and 2X4 cleats. The 2X4 cleats were bolted perpendicular to the horizontal stringer extension and then the cleats were bolted to the rim joist.
- Stringer reinforcement: For both sets of stairways I added a 2X6 horizontally spanning all the stringers at the location of where the stair railing posts were to be placed. This gives the stringers extra strength against lateral force of the railing posts.
- Stair railings The stair railings ran from the deck railing posts to posts bolted to the side of the stringers. I bolted the posts to the stringers a full step up on the stringers to get more wood contact with the posts for bolting. This made the stair railing posts nice and strong but I needed to extend the stair railings past the post down to the end of the stringers.
The thought of building the stairs was intimidating at first but it actualy went pretty smoothly. It took some grunt work to dig for the stringer pad but once that was in the stairs went pretty quickly. I used more stringers than needed because I had some left over from another planned stairway that I was talked out of so, instead of returning the lumber, I just worked in the extra stringers to the other sets of stairs. Like everything else on this deck, the stairs are VERY rigid!!
Stair building Illustrated
Installing stringer pad
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Stringer extensions added and stringers attached
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Tread and risers installed (Note: The last riser at the top has blind stop holes drilled to cover the bolts used for the stringer extension attachments)
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Stairway railings
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Notice the location of the railing post attachment in above photos and how the railing is extended past the end of the post. This attachment location made the posts as strong as possible.
Completed Stairways
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