The Deck
The Deck
A Deck??? Yes -really!!! I need somewhere to build all the straights and curves that will form the track work. The largest open space I have that I can guarentee is flat is the space between the hall door and the kitchen sink. Allied to this are the problems of getting the completed sections out of the kitchen and round the doorways into the back garden. Previously I had a clear shot at it through the bathroom window -but we have moved!
The components for The Deck were worked out during the Wednesday Afternoon -OK the final bits as I had been brewing this for a few months now. I selected what I wanted from the site and filled my shopping basket. A normal amount of hesitation and The Plastic payed for it. It will be delivered tomorrow between 1 and 4 pm -less than 48 hours after I clicked “Confirm”. I will admit to being impressed!!!
It is going to be 3.2 metres by 3.6 metres wide -this being the cheapest sizes of decking planks for the job. By a curious co-incidence they are also the right size area to construct a 3.2m radius curve on.... I have to drill and jig all the timbers by hand -the last time I built a deck was over 5 years ago and I still have some scars from my first attempts at it.
The “plan”, (if I dare call it that), is to level the site and clear it of grass, bricks, pieces of stone etc and then assemble the outer frame. This will be held together with huge shelf brackets at the corners. The ends of the frame will then be lashed together with 0.6cm coach bolts 15.0cm long -two in each end. The laterals will be spaced at 40cm intervals -giving nine laterals in total and pinned to the frame with two coach bolts in each end...
Why coach bolts? This has to do with the EASE of tightening them up. I can simply fit a socket to a ratchet driver and crank them in tight.
The decking slats will then be screwed to the laterals and it should give a very strong structure. The longitudinals and the laterals are all 5cm by 10cm C16 treated timber -so they can rest directly on the ground.
As the site is generally very level I am wondering if I really do need to support it on legs? I will have to see once I have built the frame just how flat the site is. The new garden is very flat compared to the original one -which was a combination of a 1 in 10 down slope with a 1 in 5 cross slope and it rose at 1 in 3 at the bottom... Needless to say the supports for the deck that I built there were ”interesting”. I sat it on three legs each of 20cm square timbers. Since three points naturally form a “plane” -it made levelling the frame for the deck VERY simple. There was this panic stricken moment that I remember looking at it and thinking -”There is no way on this Earth that thing is level”. It was a natural reaction as one side of it was just above the ground and by the time it was at the other side it was 60cm in the fresh air!!! I had used quick setting “Postcrete” and I knew that once the critical 30 minute mark had passed there was no way I would be able to correct any mistake -with out a sledgehammer...
Given the unforgiving nature of the “soil” (?) around here I am seriously thinking of simply building rubble “pads” at the junctions of the frame for the deck to sit above, then shovelling concrete on top of them, then lowering the frame into the mess and waiting for it all to set solid.
All this awaits the building of the frame.
Wickes’ have delivered the timber, decking screws and bags of “ready mix” concrete on Friday. Your humble scribe humped 250Kgs of ready mix in 25Kg paper bags to the safety of the back porch. The timbers were no problem and I slung a couple under each arm.
The next shot shows how the longitudinals have been marked out for drilling the 6mm holes through them. The laterals have been marked with the alignment centres and you can see that the first bracket for the frame has been fitted.
Here you can see the decking slats stacked up in the gap between the raised beds along with the 10cm sq posts. For those interested there a rows of cabbage like things on the right one and peas beans etc on the left one. At the other end of the raised beds will be the end of the Great North Straight.
This is the area where it will all sit. The front of the summer house. This is the last part of the garden to be “tamed” and it and the back of the summer house have been left until last, as the summer house has formed the “base camp” during the work on the garden. The Koi Bridge has been unearthed from it and assembled. It takes the weight of me, (105Kg), so it should be safe for my wife and son (at the moment yes, but given his rapid rate of growth -maybe not in a few years...) The back of the summer house will have the Oriental plants part of the garden in it -hence the Koi Bridge. It is made of “charred timbers” which means that it will not rot, but it is somewhat messy to assemble -you really have to like charcoal with everything....
The end of the deck will sit level with the RHS of the summer house and the track will appear in the gap between it and the fence -ignore the old fence panels the bonfire will see to them soon!!! Various pots with inhabitants “growing on a bit” have been moved from their sanctuary and will (eventually) be planted around the deck. The layout with the pieces of decking and the spirit level show that I may be lucky and only have to skin off 20 - 30cm at most on the LHS of the Deck. This means I can squeeze level access from the lawn side for my wife (which is very important) and there is a built in cliff for my son to shoot cars and aeroplanes off into fresh air -again very important!!!
The next shot shows the completed frame and some muck and grass has been removed from the site. The ends have been placed on broken flagstones (one way of getting rid of them), and there has been some excavation on the top LHS -but not as much as feared! The second apricot tree has unfortunately had to be moved around quite a bit, but as it is in a pot -it shouldn’t annoy it too much.
After some heaving from one end of the garden to the other... The next shot shows the “test fit” of everything prior to assembly. The central lateral is serving a position of honour in that it is between two “workmates” and I am sat on it taking the shot!
Once I am happy that I have got everything to fit in the correct place -I then have to take it all to pieces again(!) The weed matting has to be pinned to the ground and the slabs re-laid for the last time on top of them. Then the frame put on the slabs and the whole thing screwed together. Then I pour the bags of ready mix to fix and anchor the frame to the pieces of slab. We then wait a couple of days for it to “go off” and then it is screw fest time and over 400 screws secure the slats to the laterals. This is normally the most exiting, and also most boring, time of the whole construction sequence.
I have seen in the Wickes catalogue an Arch that would look just perfect as the entrance to the decked area of the garden. We have also decided to paint the Koi Bridge a fetching shade of “Bluebell” as this is the nearest we can get to “Wedgewood Blue”. (Think about it!!!)
This shot shows the decking slats laid on the frame for both test reasons and to aid in drying them. The wood warps and shifts as it dries and it is easier to see what is happening when they are dry. The pressure treatment is very good but you can still see the stuff leech out of the timbers when you cut or drill into it.
We have ordered the next batch of materials from Wickes’ (including the Arch!) and we await delivery on Monday...
The problem of the Koi Bridge and how it gets people too and from the terrace in front of the rockery is becoming acute! The solution seems to scrap my original design plans for a wide 70 degree curve that followed the terrace and allowed people to sit and admire the passing locos into an almost “sectional” plan that causes the track to cross under the bridge at right angles to it. The SM32 track that follows the same course will now have to split off head back down the garden skirting the lawn and the deck to meet it again at the house end. The Koi Bridge now crosses the track work at the first vertical section of track before the stretched return corners behind the summer house. This will make the layout easier to design -but to my mind not as “artistic” as the original design. Ho Hum!!!
The height of the bridge above the track work has to be decided by two factors:
A: it has to be high enough above the track work to get a loco underneath it.
B: it has to be low enough not to require too much physical effort to get a wheelchair across it.
This may mean digging a slight cutting for the G3 locos track work to travel along -visually this would also increase the interest of the layout and I think this is what I will do. The “maths” say that there will have to be a 40cm gap between the rail and the base of the bridge. It will also give my wife a very viable excuse to purchase more Japanese maple trees -not that she needs much anyway!!! The SM32 track work would remain at “ground level”, (give or take a bit). The real problem I now have is that fact that one of my most difficult, (technically speaking), locos, the Hagans Type “J” cannot take std SM32 2 feet 6 inch radius curve. This is because of the 6 wheel chassis and the 4 wheel lever powered “Tipple Fritz” bogie at the rear. This means some form of sidings where I can uncouple and reverse the Hagans and run it as an “out and back” for this loco, or I make all the return curves of 3 feet 6 inch radius around the deck(?)
The G3 track work is now more “square-ish” whilst the SM32 track work will have to be worked out by the horrible method of simply laying it down on the ground and marking out where it sits...
One of the benefits of having a deep dark addiction to coffee is that you can exploit it to the full -in my case a large Cona machine... I got up bright and early (5 am) primed the machine and set to work. Soon the living room floor was covered with crumpled scribbles etc as I vainly tried to work things out on paper. By 7am the only answer I could see was to grab a handful of track and start dry laying it across the lawn. At 7:30am my son joined me with his bowl of cereals as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. We started laying and looking and by 8am we had something that could work, but it did need approval from the domestic goddess -who duly arose at 9am... (Friday and Saturday are her “days off”)
This is the track looking from the end of what will be the great Southern Straight (i.e. the rose border) looking towards the deck. You can see the Koi Bridge nestled against the rockery for the time being.
This shot shows the track looking from the deck along it towards the rose border. My son is sat in his slippers on the LHS on the “rumble cart” that contains the garden tools etc. The pot bellied BBQ gets a spruce up and new coat of Black VHT paint once a year, we have had it well over a decade -but this might well be its last year(!)
Wickes delivered what they had, and of course the essential pieces was out of stock -but to be fair they will deliver when they find some... The Garden Arch was assembled on the “lawn”. The last word is used in a hopeful turn of phrase as we keep throwing grass seed at it in the vain and foolish hope that some of it may grow(!) I have decided that I will add another 15Kg of seed to it this year and then “lime” it in the autumn. In the interim I have thrown about 10kgs of “Blood, Fish and Bone” over it to encourage what we have to spread. This may cure (or rather hide) some of the cracks due to clay shrinkage. But on the plus side I did mow it on Sunday afternoon and actually get a complete hopper full of mown grass.
Anyway -this is the arch. We intend to paint it Bluebell and have three lanterns on the lawn side of it and three bells on the deck side of it. (YES -we liked that film too!!!)
Although the legs look overly long in the picture -40cm of them are going to be sunk into a concrete foundation -leaving 2.2 metres “headroom” with a gap of 1.6m between the uprights. I am not looking forward to putting the arch into its foundation holes. To give you some idea of scale the X’s are roughly a metre square.
After one day of massive effort, (or so my back tells me) -the deck has been completed. lifted the frame and placed weed control fabric underneath it and weighted it down with stones. The laterals were then screwed to the frame with some “grunt” from both me and the power driver. It could get them in until the last 2cm thereafter it was down to me and my socket wrench. The frame was fixed to the chassis that supports the summer house in the same way. There was “some” precision adjustment of the frame to butt up to the chassis -witness the sledgehammer...
During lunch I put the power driver on charge and examined my deck screws. These were a Torx fitting -something that I had never used before. I got a free Torx-2 fitting in my bow of screws -but to be honest it looked pretty puny compared to the Posi-3 head that the frame screws were fitted with. I laid my first slat and duly screwed in one end with two screws and then bent the slat to shape and screwed the other end in. and then stitched the slat to the frame. And at the end of the 3 hour long process I was extremely amazed. I had put in nearly 370 screws and I had not skipped or split or chewed a single screw head, will be using Torx headed screws again? Oh yes -most definitely!!!
This is the completed and installed arch, some fun and games were practised getting it into position but I did not have to strain too hard. The plan was to drag it along the lawn and then it would fall into the pre-dug holes and some shuftying with grit under the legs would get it level. Getting it into the holes part of the plan was flawless. Getting it level etc was -errrmm nasty! I had to enlist the aid of “Her Pinkness” to get things done. The problem is that she does not speak the same language as I do. When I asked how far I was from level she would reply “the front leg left hand down” -I eventually trained her to reply “half a bubble” or “a quarter bubble” -thereafter things went faster!
Once everything was balanced on its pile of stones I threw a bag of “ready mix” into each of the holes and watered it.
Well it is now September and the deck has been busy over the summer months. I arranged my “tiles” that form “stream-in-a-box”.
And (finally!) I get a space large enough to experiment with my curves.
