I am now moving down to the number 2 Google search result for “building stairs” and it is the webpage located at http://www.hometime.com/Howto/projects/decks/deck_11.htm.

I’m trying to determine if anyone gives an online tutorial that would allow me to actually build a set of stairs. Hometime.com purportedly shows me how to build a set of deck stairs. Let’s see how far we get, shall we?


As opposed to askthebuilder.com, hometime.com seems to lay out the process in a series of steps. This site loves adsense as well as their page is littered with it. We start off with the very basics. To build a set of stairs, I need to know how many stairs will be needed to span a certain height and length. Easy enough.

1 – Measure the height of the deck. I’m going to create some hypothetical measurements and try to run through the calculations. The picture shows a guy on a ladder measuring the deck. It looks like it is roughly 8 feet high so 96 inches. I assume we measure in inches but no one has cleared that up.

2 – We take that number and divide by 7 (“a typical stairway rise”). 96/7 = 13.7 and some more change. We didn’t get a whole number as they had hoped, and we can’t build 13.7 steps to cover an 8 foot height. So now we need to round that to the next whole number which would be 14. So we have 14 steps.

3 – We need to take 14 and divide it back into the height. Okay 96/14 = 6.86 which gives me the rise I’ll need for that number of treads. So I need to remember 6.86 for some reason. I assume that’s how quickly 14 stairs will traverse 8 feet in height.

4 – Okay, they are telling me to take 6.86 and divide it into 75. Where did they get 75? Oh well, I’ll do what they say – 75/6.86 = 10.93. I assume it is okay to round to the nearest hundredth on these calculations.

5 – So at this point I have a rise of 6.86 and a run of 10.93 (both in inches, I assume). My question is can I divide a yardstick into .86 or .93 easily? 6.86 would be just shy of 6 14/16. and 10.93 would be just shy of 10 15/16. Can’t I somehow get it to a whole number to make my life easier?

6 – They lost me here – “So with a typical rise of 7 inches, a typical run might be 10-1/2 inches. A rise of 7-1/2 inches would work best with a run of 10 inches. But this so-called “comfort formula” does allow some leeway, so layouts of 6-12 (72) and 7-11 (77) work out fine.” How do you figure this out?

7 – Laying out the stringers with a framing square – this looks relatively simple once you realize that you start with the rise on the bottom and end with the run on the top.Hometime.com gives a pretty good explanation and I could probably do it from here. I don’t understand where they got the “75″ and I don’t understand their fudging in step 6 above but I may not have to in order to do this.

Good job hometime.com.

[tags]building stairs, stair stringer calculator, stair building, stair treads, rise run, stair stringer spreadsheet[/tags]

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