Long and Winding Deck Stairs: Safe and Stylish
In the picture below, you can see a deck at the top floor rear part of the building. This deck is accessible, both from with inside the unit and from a long and winding stairway that reaches the deck from the ground below. Decks are really nice because they provides a type of convenience where you can walk out directly from a bedroom on the top floor of a house, for example. In that case, you can just go outside and experience a bit of fresh air without having to go all the way to the front of the house at the street or to the backyard from the downstairs kitchen. In this case though, the deck also has a stairway that goes all the way down to that backyard. But if you look closely in the picture, towards the bottom, the deck basically consumes and takes up a major portion of that limited space in the yard.
The stairway, for egress, to access the deck from the ground or from the rear of the house may be required by the building code. The building code doesn’t actually, specifically, require a deck to have a stairway to the ground. Understanding that information, it’s only natural to wonder why it’s worth having a stairway when it’s such a long and winding construction that takes up so much of the yard. The reason is that although this particular row home was built as a single home, it’s now been split up into multiple separate units.
Those multiple separate units are each accessible from the front of the house, but they also may need to have a secondary means of egress. If it were a single home, the stairway would not be necessary at all, but since the upstairs is a separate apartment from the downstairs, that upstairs apartment doesn’t have a back door that leaves directly to the yard, and instead this stairway provides that access.
If you look more closely, at the bottom left hand corner of the photo below, you can see a lower level run of a flight of stairs to this top level deck. It looks like the rise to run ratio is off a bit and it looks like this stairway is at a slope or grade that is too steep. Generally, it’s required to have a rise to run ratio of about 7.5 to 11.
That means for every seven inches or increments units, approximately, overall upwards, you need to have roughly 11 inches or increments of equal size of horizontal run. That is about 32° of overall slope, but it looks like the stairway in the photos here is over 45 degrees.
In some cases, with historic construction elements, a rise to run like that might be acceptable because it might be considered a “grandfathered” condition. Generally though in new construction like this, a significant deviation from the code requirements are not allowed or accepted.
It looks like there’s at least two mid landings in the stair. Mid landings are flat areas that run or are installed in the middle of a long stairway, generally the mid landings separate different flights of the stairs and particularly, these photos show a good example of where a mid landing can be used to change the angle or direction of a flight of stairs. In some cases, in large stairways, mid landings might be used for as a spot of transition for turns in the stairway as a stairway changes direction completely through multiple levels of a building.
The next picture below shows a close-up view of this deck. Although one of the main reasons for the deck might be a secondary means of egress, it looks like this deck is also used for an outdoor storage space. It looks like people here are actually taking trash cans down from this level, all the way to the backyard and Alley below. That seems like a counterintuitive use of the space and a backwards way of doing the work of trash removal. It actually seems like it would be easier just to bring individual smaller bags of trash down to the trash cans and leave the trash cans near the alley from which point they can be rolled out to the alleys on trash day.
The next picture below shows a series of similarly built row homes that have decks at the rear of the top floor. It’s likely that these decks go from a bedroom with an exterior door which leads to the deck. These decks are all for convenience, because they can provide the bedroom and occupants a simple way to enjoy some fresh air outdoors. However, these particular decks do not have the long stairways that lead all the way to the ground level. It’s likely that in this particular configuration, the individual units or homes do not need a secondary means of egress at this location that leads all the way to the ground
This deck in the neighboring deck next door are almost identical, they both project away from the house about 8 ft and are supported at the outer rim joist by relatively thin posts that are probably undersized for this type of application.
Use a contractor who understands and cares about doing things right. Always, feel free to reach out to us here at Dupont Decks and Patios. We are happy to help with almost all steps of the deck building and design process. A backyard and outdoor space should make a significant, positive impact on both quality of life and home value. We can help with more than just decks, we also build patios, pergolas, ramadas, awnings, gazebos, arbors, and privacy fences.
Let us know about your ideas and talk to us if you have questions about possibilities. We are happy to participate in improving your outdoor space and quality of life! You can call us at (202) 774-9128. You can find us online at https://dupontdeckspatiosdc.com and you can email us there as well at https://dupontdeckspatiosdc.com/contact-us
