Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Rock solid deck guardrail posts

A customer recently had me come over to help them with their deck.  They had removed the old decking and guardrail in order to replace it with Trex.  The decking was already down, but the new guardrail posts were not yet installed.  Modern code requires the guardrail to support a 200 lb load (horizontally) at any point.  The AWC DCA-6 essentially requires the use of hold-down anchors for mounting the guardrail posts. 

So, unfortunately for this customer, much of the decking had to come back up in order to gain access for mounting all this.  But the good news to him was that he used hidden clips on the decking that allowed a board in the middle to be removed without removing the ones around it. 

Some of the space was tight, but in the end we got 9 new 4x4 posts installed, and they are all rock solid.  I made extensive use of Simpson DTT2Z's, galvanized threaded rod and bolts, and some fairly significant 2x8 PT blocking.  The customer was able to put the decking back on without too much fuss, and will ultimately sleeve the posts and install a PVC/metal railing system.





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