Balau Stairs Produced At Hawaan Forest Estate, Umhlanga,
These wooden steps were the very first stairs I built. This was towards the start of my deck building career and I had no idea basically what to do. I had been involved in carpentry for a reasonable while so I had an understanding of timber, how it behaves and the way to construct and manufacture items, but I had no idea of what needed to be done to create steps both properly and affordably. I resorted to Google and surprisingly, or not, I found hundreds of videos on how you can manufacture stairs. Primarily American videos so a couple of adaptions to our local circumstances and I had an excellent idea of what was involved.
I applied the more conventional, much more costly process of creating stairs. I took three pieces of 50 x 220 stock and cut my treads and risers out of the wood. This can be completed by first calculating the riser and tread depending on the height of one's sundeck that you wish to get to with the steps. Despite the fact that an optimal height of every riser is about 190mm and the tread about 280mm, this can vary depending on the vertical height so as to maintain each and every riser and tread the same height and length.
When these two measurements have been calculated, one utilizes a large metal square to draw the risers and treads on the stock. The square is simply put on the stock and the two points are marked off on each end of the square resulting in a right angle where the tread meets the riser. The trick was cutting through the 50mm wood using a hand held skill saw. My skill saw has a tiny blade so it kept jamming and burning the timber. In hindsight I would have utilised 40mm stock or even less as the strength of the wood exists in the width, not the thickness. So a 30 or 40 by 220 would have been considerably more affordable and a lot easier to work with. Nonetheless, we persevered and in the end had 3 stunning stringers cut and ready for installation.
From there it was a matter of placing the stringers in place with the tread level and fixing them in place with posts concreted in the ground. The inner most stringer was fixed directly to the wall using sleeve anchors and this became our starting point from which we set the others, level to that and to ground. With all our stringers in place we decked the surface using 19 x 68 deckboards. We added a bit of substructure to the sides to accept our cladding, clad it and sealed it using a Nova product. Nova produces some top quality timber preservatives, but be careful not to mix them up with the varnishes. Varnish is a no go on any deck as it will peel and flake as the sun breaks it down. To get it off afterwards is near impossible and varnishing over it again results in a blotchy effect. One cant use anything other than varnish once it has been varnished so stay away from varnish or anything that dries on the surface, with the exception of water based sealers. An article on sealing decks can be found here.
I applied the more conventional, much more costly process of creating stairs. I took three pieces of 50 x 220 stock and cut my treads and risers out of the wood. This can be completed by first calculating the riser and tread depending on the height of one's sundeck that you wish to get to with the steps. Despite the fact that an optimal height of every riser is about 190mm and the tread about 280mm, this can vary depending on the vertical height so as to maintain each and every riser and tread the same height and length.
When these two measurements have been calculated, one utilizes a large metal square to draw the risers and treads on the stock. The square is simply put on the stock and the two points are marked off on each end of the square resulting in a right angle where the tread meets the riser. The trick was cutting through the 50mm wood using a hand held skill saw. My skill saw has a tiny blade so it kept jamming and burning the timber. In hindsight I would have utilised 40mm stock or even less as the strength of the wood exists in the width, not the thickness. So a 30 or 40 by 220 would have been considerably more affordable and a lot easier to work with. Nonetheless, we persevered and in the end had 3 stunning stringers cut and ready for installation.
From there it was a matter of placing the stringers in place with the tread level and fixing them in place with posts concreted in the ground. The inner most stringer was fixed directly to the wall using sleeve anchors and this became our starting point from which we set the others, level to that and to ground. With all our stringers in place we decked the surface using 19 x 68 deckboards. We added a bit of substructure to the sides to accept our cladding, clad it and sealed it using a Nova product. Nova produces some top quality timber preservatives, but be careful not to mix them up with the varnishes. Varnish is a no go on any deck as it will peel and flake as the sun breaks it down. To get it off afterwards is near impossible and varnishing over it again results in a blotchy effect. One cant use anything other than varnish once it has been varnished so stay away from varnish or anything that dries on the surface, with the exception of water based sealers. An article on sealing decks can be found here.