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Old 12-05-2020, 01:53 PM
jamespierce (James)
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jamespierce is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 321
The Deck

The deck is a galvanized steel frame with synthetic wood planks and ~400 stainless steel deck screws. All products from Bunnings, none were cheap. The reason I went with the steel frame is it's a single integral piece once assembled which is then put on adjustable legs. This makes it easy to get the deck perfectly level, and it also makes it possible to sling the whole thing with the dome onto a truck if I need to move it someday. The advice I had on the dome was that getting its base perfectly level was key to good performance and reduced wear and tear over time.

No timber to rot, no timber to paint, no timber for termites to eat and no timber to warp over time. The synthetic timber planks were chosen for the same reason.

Building the deck took two of us two very big ~10 hour days, you need a couple of very good impact drivers and you need to cycle the batteries through a charger. As you can see from the photo the deck is anchored to one corner (the shortest leg in my case), a couple of hydrolic jacks then allow the deck to be precisely leveled and positioned.

If I did it again the only thing I would change is trimming the boards in place with a track saw when they were all fixed. We measured and pre-cut with a mitre saw, but it's difficult to get the ends perfect this way.
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