Tips from Bear Creek: Is your deck safe?

The most important thing about your deck: it needs to be safe.

Brian Mininger at Bear Creek, who has been in the construction business for more than 20 years, points out some things to keep in mind when it comes to deck safety.

The first: size. One home that he visited recently had a deck outside that was long and narrow, eight feet in width, which looked great, but there just wasn’t much space to get around.

“The reality is that if you set a table anywhere on this deck, you don’t have room to walk around it,” Mininger said.

This would be fine if the deck was used by one or two people, but if you have friends and family over, it might not function as well as you’d like, not safely, anyway.

Another safety issue with older decks: the railing.

Older decks can tend to feature pickets that are wider than current building codes call for, which can be a huge safety hazard for small children and pets.

“A child could get his head through here and get stuck. And we don’t want that to happen for you and your family. We don’t want your small dogs to fall through this. This is an area that definitely needs some upgrade,” Mininger said on site.

For more tips from the folks at Bear Creek, go online to BearCreek.co.