Designing a backyard deck for my house

One thing I've learned with concrete recently is that the drum mixer is less efficient than the mud mixer. For the drum mixer you prepare batches, the consistency between batches may not be very good. The batch of concrete is pretty heavy too. The mud mixer has a steady dribble of concrete coming out of the tip, you can be doing other things while it comes out. It's not as heavy to reposition either. The consistency of the concrete is better too.

If a concrete truck can reach the spot, that's the easiest.

This video shows a mud mixer in action around the 25 minute mark.

https://youtu.be/CbrZX6n3F-g

Overall you did a great job on this. Impressive if you haven’t done it before. Your retrospective is solid. Using post saddles is the move so the wood doesn’t touch the concrete. Generally easiest and most forgiving to set the concrete pour height with a transit, chalk lines, and use sleeve anchors with saddles (which it seems like you did) so you align things perfectly once the concrete has cured enough to load.

For anyone else reading this considering taking on a deck and digging footings, the best approach with the holes if you don’t have access to a skid steer or excavator with an auger attachment, is to rent a towable earth auger like this:

https://www.unitedrentals.com/marketplace/equipment/lawn-lan...

You only need 1 person to operate and it’s much easier than 2 person because it doesn’t transfer any horizontal load / leverage into the operator so you can just focus on lowering the auger and raising it up. Much safer if you hit a root or rock too.

If you’re brave though you can just dig it by hand though. Everyone should dig some 4’ deck footings or shovel 3/4” clear stone all day at least once (good for drainage and preventing mud under the deck) so its easier to see and appreciate how great working on a computer daily really is.

Drafting notes, from a childhood watching my mother and father interact over technical drawings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_drawing_tool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_curve is one of my favorites - any complicated curve you like, essentially, as a template tool, or you can use a flat spline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_spline (you might be familiar with splines as a concept from 3d rendering)

PS if you've ever wondered how they made such wonderfully perfect dotted lines... sometimes they "cheated", and similar versions exist with mechanical pencils: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dotted_Line_Tool_from_the...

Really nice. I build a deck this year too. I would have loved to have a nice blog post like this beforehand. I love his page. Inspires to write. Simple, clean, blog has 2 years break here and there, but writing!

Before doing myself, I did not know just how much work it is. It looked so simple. But it took me many weekends over a few months. Digging holes for concrete feet. Mixing concrete (I found its easy to do in a wheelbarrow) and pouring. Measuring (buy a laser level!). Cutting the posts. Then beams and joists. Noticing the wood I bought was not the same thickness everywhere (I thought my post height was off, but the laser level and my cut was perfect, the beams were not). Lastly just the decking was almost 1000 screws.

Lovely to see the entire process of planning all the way through building, and it's a nice change from the usual type of project shown on HN, and even a change from the way in which woodwork projects are normally presented

Good job