The deck is done and ready for the final inspection by the town building department. When that has been passed I receive the CO (certificate of occupancy). This has been a fun project and I learned quite a few things. First, dealing with the town building department has been easier than I thought it would. I can’t imagine why somebody would take it upon themselves to build unauthorized structures on their property. It can create many problems with insurance, tax adjusters, and possibly transferring the property. Building codes are in place to insure constructed properly and are safe to inhabit.

I found the building department personnel to be helpful, answering any questions I had, doing inspections in a timely manner, etc. If you involve them and ask their advice, often they become friendly and the inspections are a breeze. Now, it may not be like that in all municipalities, but in smaller towns and cities, it seems it would be pretty easy to get friendly with the building department.

As for the deck itself, it seems to have taken a long time to build from start to finish. I had a very busy summer this year, with several trips out of state for family reasons. I think if I added up the total hours I worked on it, it would come out to about 35 to 40 hours or so, including digging the footings. Digging the footings was by far the worst part of the whole project. Crawling around in the crawl space bolting the stringers to the side of the house was second. The actual framing was pretty easy, and screwing down the deck boards was easy, although repetitive.

I am not sure how these prices will hold up, but for the summer of 2007, the total cost break down looks something like this:

*Some or all of these items were given to me by Jay, who removed a deck from the back of his house and replaced it with a screened in porch this summer.

**These items were on hand from other projects around the house.

The building permit cost $45.00 and the rental of the post hole digger cost $89.10, so therefore the total cost for building the deck was: $970.74

The actual deck size is 170 Square Feet, so the cost to build it myself was $5.71 per square foot. I estimate I saved about $1,500 in labor. The average cost for a wood deck in this area is $15-25 per square foot if you have somebody else do all the work.

By using some salvaged lumber and and joints hangers and things I already had on hand, I saved: $331.36

Treated lumber comes in several different flavors. Since about 2003 or so, the primary treatment product for pressure treated wood has been ACQ, which stands for Alkaline Copper Quaternary. This replaced
CCA (Chromated Copper Arsenate), which contained arsenic. ACQ is a pesticide and is toxic to humans. You must take the proper precautions when handling this material such as wearing gloves and a dust mask when cutting, and disposing excess material in a land fill. You should never burn treated lumber and don’t use sawdust and scraps as mulch, etc. For more information, see the ACQ safe handling sheet.

Basically, pressure treated lumber is rated by retention of ACQ in pounds per cubic foot of wood (lb/CuFt). That give and indication of how much wood preservative is present after the pressure treatment process. These are the applications:

• Above Ground – 0.25 – Decking, fence boards, hand rails, deck supports
• Ground Contact Fresh Water – 0.40 – Fence posts, landscaping, piers, docks,
  etc.
• Permanent Wood Foundations – 0.60 – Wood foundations, crawl spaces
• Poles – 0.60 – Building, transmission and distribution poles

Overall, I can say that I learned quite a bit, and had fun building the deck.

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