July 10, 2012 | Quality products take time and effort to produce. They take research, preparations and planning. One such quality product on the horizon for NADRA is a “NADRA Deck Construction Standard”, or some sort of similar title. With so much information available online for deck construction, it’s hard to know what sources are legitimate and reputable. There’s quite a mix of opinions online and in practice. As the nation’s only association for professionals in the deck and railing industry, maybe we should work to produce a new standard…a NADRA standard. Together, our membership spans the entire industry and can provide the best foundation for our country to build the next generation of decks on. It’s going to take knowledge from all parts of the industry to truly represent the industry. We have that knowledge.
To develop a NADRA standard we need to compare our practices to the various local deck construction requirements across our nation and be sure we’re ahead. The International Residential Code is often amended locally before adoption. Double this with the difficulty of relating many IRC provisions to deck construction, and you’ve got little “standard” to work from. To soften this issue, many local building departments have developed their own guides for deck construction. We need to review them. Being in the “research” stage of this lofty goal, your association needs your help. Send us a link or pdf to any and all local deck construction guides you can find. We need to have the opportunity to see what other ideas there are in our nation about deck construction minimum standards long before we create our own.
We need to do our homework.
Members…send us your local standards and guides so we can start to prepare. Email Info@NADRA.org
Glenn Mathewson
Technical Advisor
