If You Were Building a Deck......

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by petegz28

Well if I knew how to upload pics here I would show you some. And I agree I don't need 3 and he is trying to squeeze in 4. Nevertheless I have 2 posts 1+ foot closer together than 2 others. That seems to just be not right to me.

And what about these 8 inch concrete blocks? That seems to be a little excessive as well.

My dad built a 3-level deck on the back of his house more than 25 years ago. I helped quite a bit. For the footers, he dug a hole about 12" in diameter and about 12" deep. He poured concrete several inches deep in the hole and let it dry. Then, he poured concrete into KFC buckets and imbedded the post anchors in that. Once those had dried, he sat them on top of the concrete in the holes, then he back filled around the part that came out of the bucket until about 4" were sticking from the ground. The deck is still standing. Overall, I'd prefer a footing that goes into the ground and has a mechanical attachement to the wood, rather than a block sitting on the gound with the post sitting on it.