Yard project for August.... and counting

[ben9732]

Since I've time on my hands, I finally re-did our deck and patio ripping out 20+ year old ones. It's nice to have a backhoe .... unless your my grass.

This time I did not want to have railing on the deck, and don't have to by code since it's not that high. Neither the deck or patio are that large, 18'x12' for the deck and 18'x32' for the patio.





They are still works in progress as I have to put in a bed around the deck that will be rimmed with Belgian block, and due to the hardness of Ipe, staining will be redone every few months until the wood accepts enough stain into the pores.

Full album: http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/...75030254tjZSEv

[Mep]

Looks pretty good.

[django1]

Nice! That ipe is nice wood. I have to take an allergy pill before cutting it though. What is the stone you used?

[Ajax]

The deck is gorgeous, Jack. Beautiful wood, and beautifully finished.

[shadowlight]

Looks great Jack.

[ben9732]

Thanks guys. Wife is happy, I'm happy.

Trying to get in as much before the ground freezes. Building a dry laid stone wall across from the patio now and going through the process of tearing out old landscaping and putting in new trees. Cool thing about doing this in the latter part of the fall dormant period is I can move the trees bare root. Old technique not done for decades (except in seeding stock) due to having many items available bag-and-balled, but it's easier for me to move the larger stuff and I keep soil down on the tree farm.

Django - funny you mention allergy. I did not have any skin reaction from working with it, but I did not use respiratory protection as I cut so little. After building the deck Leslie and I both picked up a cold that included our lungs. She cleared up fine but for the past few months I've been battling moderate to heavy congestion. I've been through two regiments of very strong antibiotics with no resolution. Occasionally (once a year) I have a bout with asthma, and my doc and I are starting to think this is a continuing reaction to the Ipe dust. It's getting better, but at the rate its going its gong to take a year to clear out.

The stone is Pennsylvania variegated fieldstone. Some call it bluestone. We wanted some color variation in it and the stone has some iron oxide tones in it that goes well with the deck. It also goes well with the stone work that we put one the front of the house.

The patio was dry laid on 6" of compacted crusher rock (18 tons) and 2" of stone dust. After completing the lay, I dug a trench around the patio and installed drainage consisting of 11/2" PVC wrapped in landscape fabric that ties into my downspout drainage piping. That took care of the pooling water issue that shown in one image on Webshots.

[etcarroll]

Very nice patio!

That's what I had planned to have done off of my deck. But now waiting for market to come back enough to put house up for sale, so most likely wont happen.

[koa]

Very nice looking deck. I looked at your pictures in the link and I'm curious what brand the deck fasteners are. I see Simpson label but I don't think that's part of the fastening system. How did you like the way the system installed? Thanks.

[ben9732]

Correct. I had used Simpson stainless hangers and nails, along with stainless screws and bolts. Everything was stainless.

There are numerous stories in the forums about problems with Ipe. Cupping, bowing, tearing out fasteners, just as there are stories that are all good. I think there is so much variation in the Ipe supplied that it's hard for contractors to have a good handle on fastening, and on finishing as well.

For a while I was going to face screw all the boards down and plug each location. I wanted to do that as much as putting a nail gun to my head. I didn't mind plugging all the screw counter-bores around the perimeter, though. I settled on using Tiger-Claw stainless clips. Since I used 4/4 boards rather then 5/4 (you can do that since Ipe has a high modulus of elasticity - guess I could have just written "stiff") I had to get the mini-version. You can order boards that are pre-grooved for the clips, but I also read about Ipe lifting the edges due to the grooving. So at every joist location I used my biscuit cutter where the clip would lay.

If at some point my Ipe starts to excessively cup, then I have the option to countersink, screw, and plug the edges of the boards into the joists.

Another thing I did was grading the soil under the low deck away from the house. Then I installed a layer to 10mil black poly on grade. After that I used my sprinkler to soak the area and see where there were puddles in low depressions that I did not get. At these points I put several small slits to allow that water to drain to earth. With this setup, rain will mainly flow outside of the deck area, and high moisture from the ground will not penetrate up into the bottom of the boards, hopefully preventing cupping of the boards.

[django1]

I think there is so much variation in the Ipe supplied that it's hard for contractors to have a good handle on fastening, and on finishing as well.

The thing that caught my eye about your ipe is that the color is quite regular and redder than what I installed. I've only installed ipe on one job, it was a pre-finished t&g interior floor, and the color was browner and quite varied in look... It cracked a lot along the tongue when using the flooring nailer. The stuff is murderously heavy too. I was stuck carrying about 800 sq feet of of the stuff in large bundles over a rather long distance. I've had tendinitis in both elbows since then...

[ben9732]

From what I've read django you have to pre drill for both nail and screw. This wood is so dense (therefore heavy) that the cell structure will not collapse as the nail is going through.

This batch of wood did have a good variance in color, from dark red to blond. The stain really evened things out between board colors. Attached is one of the photos from the album. If you look at the stacks of wood sorted for install,you can see some of the variation.

In NJ, like a lot of northern states, all of the stains and finishes are VOC compliant. I had read that the older TWP 100 stains were good on this wood, which was good because I accidentally bought some while in GA in the middle of this work. This is actually their Rustic Oak stain. Using the stain on PT Pine, it just soaks right in immediately. With the IPE, a similar heavy coat will just sit there wet.