How wide can we go?

This was actually an easy decision. Once you did the measuring and once I found out that my timber would come in 4.8m lengths, then 2.4m just under 8ft was not only obvious, but extended the deck size to as one friend put it, "one step short of megalomania". Any wider and it would have been difficult to access the hill below the deck space. It would also have been risking annoying the neighbours. 8ft is a nice size, one hell of a lot better than the minimum of 6ft I had considered the smallest useful size. 8ft is also a big deck. Would such a construction need planning permission?

Planning permission

Four years on and I still don't know the definitive answer to the need for planning permission. Possibly there isn't one. It is easy to be caught out on the technicalities of planning, for example in the UK you cannot erect a shed within 20m of a highway. This rule would catch my shed put up be the previous owners and I'm sure many others in the street as we back onto a road. But I'd be willing to bet that few people have bothered with planning permission. When it comes to garden decking you never see "Ground Force" worry about such issues. Probably it would have hinged on, when does a bit of decking cease being a bit of decking and become a "structure"? and thus subject to the planning laws.

I decided to take my chances, I couldn't imagine the neighbours complaining, I had judged a lot of angles and at most the deck would put a bit of shadow on one neighbours front lawn on a late summers evening.

Timber

You can't build a deck without the wood, by now I knew a little about what I wanted, and a lot of what I had read was encouraging, with modern pressure treating, timber is now a remarkably durable building material. But all told I really only knew a little and one thing I did know was that I wanted a whole lot of timber for this project. Going to B&Q and bringing it home in the boot of the car was not an ergonomic or economic option. I wanted somewhere I could buy from that would be friendly, knowledgeable, local and would deliver. I started going to builders yards, i',m sure they has what I needed, but there was no service, no prices marked and I always felt like a fish out of water.

I managed to pick up 4"x4" posts for my supports but I wasn't happy about buying anything else.

Then my internet searching got lucky, a site established Jan 28th 2000 cropped up. The Timber Decking Company LTD . This company was hidden away on a back road practically on my door step, closer than anywhere else I had looked. The prices were good and there was even a 10% off special offer at the time.

Surely too good to be true I thought, as I made my way there. But no, here was a company where you could talk directly to the owner Gary Collins, a member of the federation of master builders or for that matter his Dad who was helping out, and get a great level of service.

So I put my first order in for joists and joist hangers. Going by the book I guess I should have made clear estimates of all the quantities I'd need in advance. But I did not see the point, so long as each time I ordered I was above the free delivery amount I thought I might as well limit the amount of stuff I had cluttering the garden up, and whilst I was getting a clearer idea of what the project would cost, I was committed to it and did not need or want to worry about the overall financial damage.

The Timber Decking Company did make a silly mistake on the first order, the joist hangers supplied were flimsy things unsuitable for a project of this magnitude. Gary dealt with this in good humour, confirming my belief that they were a decent company to deal with.

So now I had the means to start building.