Ask the Builder: How to size patios and decks

Are you planning a new deck or patio soon? There’s a very good chance you’re going to make it too small. I know this based on the thousands of complaints I’ve received over the years from homeowners just like you.

Most people don’t have the ability to look at a plan drawn by an architect or design contractor and then visualize that actual patio or deck in their minds. The sad thing is most people know how big these outdoor rooms should be based on the rooms in their own homes.

I’ll never forget the first video I recorded 30 years ago. The topic was sizing a deck. The video was recorded at the producer’s house. She had a tiny 10-foot by 10-foot deck. She told me it looked huge when the builder was putting the railing on, but after he left and they put the table and chairs on it they realized how small it was.

The small deck made it hard for someone to get around the 4-foot diameter table to get to an empty chair. There was no room on the deck for the BBQ grill. The homeowner was not happy about the situation, as you might expect.

I showed in the video how to make scale cutouts of the furniture using graph paper. It turns out that’s too much work. This spring I’m going to reshoot the video. I’m going to go inside my house and show my dining and living rooms. After all, most patios and decks are just carbon copies of rooms in your home.

Think of how you intend to use your patio or deck. Is there a room in your home now that you gather in? Is the room too small? What happens when you have a party? Where do the overflow people end up? I realize you won’t have parties each weekend, but try to imagine what you’ll have to do to seat more than your immediate family and a small handful of friends.

Dining rooms that have a standard table are almost always 12 feet wide. Fourteen feet is ideal. A 12-foot wide dining room with a 4-foot wide table provides 4 feet of space on either side of the table. The back of a chair when someone is sitting at a table is at least 2 feet away from the edge of the table. A 12-foot wide room allows for 2 feet of space for a person to walk behind someone seated at the table.

Do you have a delightful great room or living room? Does it work well for conversations with a group of people? Measure the size of the room and add 2 feet minimum to each dimension to create a spacious patio or deck.

Fire pits on patios or decks can create headaches if you’re not familiar with these delightful accents. I recently saw a new patio built with a lower area that has a fire pit. When the fire pit and chairs were set on the pad, there was only 16 inches of space from the front edge of the chair to the outer surface of the fire pit.

I guarantee you people will have to scoot back and put their chairs on the grass when a good-sized fire is burning. This mistake can be avoided by looking at how architects design an outdoor fire pit or fire ring area for a hotel. Every well-designed fire pit I’ve ever seen has had a minimum of 4 feet of space from the front of a chair to the fire pit or ring. If a person wants to scoot closer, they can.

Are you planning to put a BBQ grill, accessory table or water feature on your new patio or deck? You can avoid planning oversights by laying out all you plan to put on your patio or deck on your lawn early in the planning process. You don’t have to buy everything to do this.

Pick out what you want and get the sizes of everything. Take large pieces of cardboard and create the footprint of the item. Lay the cardboard pieces on the lawn in the exact place you think they’ll be on the patio or deck.

Create enough space around each one so you can walk around everything. Make sure the BBQ grill is not too close to the table where people will be seated. Once you think you have all the pieces set at the correct distance from one another, surround all of them with string to create the outer edges of the deck or patio.

This method takes a small amount of time, but it will pay off in spades once the deck or patio is built. You won’t end up like my video producer. She ended up having to rebuild her deck!

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