Curvilinear Deck - Curved Railing

by Ryan Brazeal
(Lumsden, SK, Canada)

My Deck! Front View

This is the first deck I have ever built and I have always loved curved decks so I decided I wanted to build one!

Through my research into deck building I discovered that composite decking products allowed for greater ease and flexibility in building curved decks. I then discovered the price of composite decking which immediately squashed my chance of using such a product. For the size of the deck I wanted to build along with my budget, pressure treated lumber was my only option.

In order to maximize the size of the deck and minimize the amount of wasted material (go green!) I designed every aspect of the deck within AutoCAD.

The final deck included a 2 tier design with the upper deck having a near complete semi-circle with a radius of approx. 9 ft which starts 7 ft off the house. The lower deck follows the shape of the house which occupies a 10ft x 9ft and a 9 ft x 13ft space.

The curved rim joist of the upper deck was created with a couple of reinforced kerfed 2x8's which worked well but did not lend well to using it to support a railing system due to the weakness introduced due to the kerfing.

So I started doing more research and came across the Titan Post Anchors. I have installed 12 of them and they worked AMAZING (way better then I thought they would) the railing is incredibly strong!

The last challenge I faced was curving the support structure for the railing along with the top rail. I overcame this problem by builing a clamping jig on a sheet of 3/4 plywood. For the supports I created 2 kerfed 2x4's that I secured using PL Premium and screws in the jig and let it setup for a day.

For the top rail I used Trex composite 5/4x6 decking. I built the heater that Trex recommended in there installation instructions to allow the material to be curved. Unfortunately I was not able to get the material's internal temperature hot enough to allow the 9ft radius required.

Unfortunately no professional contractors in my area had any experience or equipment to do the job for me. So once again I used my jig, PL Premium, and a lot of clamps after ripping the decking into 1-1/4 strips.

The finished product turned out well but there are minor height differences and radius differences at the joints of the curved top rail sections but overall I am very happy with how it turned out!!!

Thanks for reading!