Hello
Our garden is quite a death trap for children, the only way it could be worse is to add a pool of Alligators.
In an effort to mitigate most of the risks we intend to build some decking at the bottom of our lawn that will span over a the 'trench' at the bottom.
We will also run a decking path along the side of the garage to the bottom of what can be seen as a sad looking Rockery at present.
We hope to build some wooden steps up the Rockery to the top tier of the garden, going straight up for 3 foot or so, then 90 degrees to the left following the back of the garage before finally going 90 degrees to the right to make it to the top level.
On the top level we'll just run some wooden fencing along the front to prevent mishaps.
I'm interested in people's opinions in how would be best to achieve this.
Regarding the decking over the paved area along the side of the house. I will have to skim off some of the lawn as their is a patio door at the far end of the first picture that is a couple of inches lower. In order to get round any damp problems I had thought of the decking missing the end of the house by 10 mm or so.
Whats the best way of supporting the decking base?
I had thought of pouring some concrete into holes in the lawn, laying bricks on top and laying the deking joists on those. Over the trench I had thought of building small pillars of concrete blocks and running the joists along those.
I was planning to run the decking alongside the garage also, again using the poured concrete and brick (or purpose designed plastic pad thing) approach.
It is the steps that are the biggest unknown really. We need to have nice easy, regular steps with railings for the sake of our little one.
I had thought of using some 6"x2" treated wood for the diagonals (like the sides of a stair case and fixing these to some 4"x4" posts, the same posts rising above for the railings.
If this is the case I would intend to set the posts into some postcrete, how far down should I be looking to dig down?
Another option would be to build up a masonry base for it all, the big boulders could be set into the soil with a layer of blocks laid on top, although I'm sure this wouldn't be good enough for the railings.
The final improvement will be a fence along the edge of the top tier. It's not really visible on the photos but the top tier has a single row of the big boulders forming its retaining wall (although I'm doubtful if it actually does anything.) Setting posts a couple of feet back isn't really an option as the top tier is only 10feet deep. I had thought of using long posts that are set into concrete in the soil of the tier below, going in just behind the boulder. Again, how much depth do you think I would need? There would be lots of leverage , so I could always set some more concrete in the top tier and fix the post to that too.
Thanks for any ideas, reasonable objections and suggestions!
Our garden is quite a death trap for children, the only way it could be worse is to add a pool of Alligators.
In an effort to mitigate most of the risks we intend to build some decking at the bottom of our lawn that will span over a the 'trench' at the bottom.
We will also run a decking path along the side of the garage to the bottom of what can be seen as a sad looking Rockery at present.
We hope to build some wooden steps up the Rockery to the top tier of the garden, going straight up for 3 foot or so, then 90 degrees to the left following the back of the garage before finally going 90 degrees to the right to make it to the top level.
On the top level we'll just run some wooden fencing along the front to prevent mishaps.
I'm interested in people's opinions in how would be best to achieve this.
Regarding the decking over the paved area along the side of the house. I will have to skim off some of the lawn as their is a patio door at the far end of the first picture that is a couple of inches lower. In order to get round any damp problems I had thought of the decking missing the end of the house by 10 mm or so.
Whats the best way of supporting the decking base?
I had thought of pouring some concrete into holes in the lawn, laying bricks on top and laying the deking joists on those. Over the trench I had thought of building small pillars of concrete blocks and running the joists along those.
I was planning to run the decking alongside the garage also, again using the poured concrete and brick (or purpose designed plastic pad thing) approach.
It is the steps that are the biggest unknown really. We need to have nice easy, regular steps with railings for the sake of our little one.
I had thought of using some 6"x2" treated wood for the diagonals (like the sides of a stair case and fixing these to some 4"x4" posts, the same posts rising above for the railings.
If this is the case I would intend to set the posts into some postcrete, how far down should I be looking to dig down?
Another option would be to build up a masonry base for it all, the big boulders could be set into the soil with a layer of blocks laid on top, although I'm sure this wouldn't be good enough for the railings.
The final improvement will be a fence along the edge of the top tier. It's not really visible on the photos but the top tier has a single row of the big boulders forming its retaining wall (although I'm doubtful if it actually does anything.) Setting posts a couple of feet back isn't really an option as the top tier is only 10feet deep. I had thought of using long posts that are set into concrete in the soil of the tier below, going in just behind the boulder. Again, how much depth do you think I would need? There would be lots of leverage , so I could always set some more concrete in the top tier and fix the post to that too.
Thanks for any ideas, reasonable objections and suggestions!
