New elevated deck with railings and a long stair run to grade, Dacula, Georgia
Gwinnett County
Deck Builder in Dacula, GA
Eighty-five road miles east of the shop, and the one Gwinnett County town we cover. Dacula is on the list because we have built a deck here.
Around 105 minutes, 85 road miles. I-75 carries 45.7 of them before the Perimeter and GA 316 take over, and the town itself sits 31 miles east of I-75.
Seven thousand people, eighty-five miles east
7,444 people live in Dacula across 2,321 homes, and 2,206 of those have somebody living in them. It's 85 road miles from Adairsville, far enough east that the drive is what decides how the work gets scheduled, not the other way round. We have built a new deck out here, so it's a run we have made and will make again.
Nineteen ninety-nine, and the deck that gets replaced whole
Most houses in Dacula went up in the late nineties, and a deck of that vintage is at the point where patching stops paying for itself. A board gets swapped, a rail gets tightened, a stringer gets sistered, and none of that touches the frame the whole thing hangs from. Past a certain amount of that, the answer is a new structure instead of one more repair. A new deck build is one fork and repair and replacement is the other, and which one you're looking at is settled underneath, not on top. Railings and stairs is the page for the parts that give a deck's age away first.
2,321 homes, and no one street pattern taking over
Dacula is a mid sized town with 2,321 homes, not a big one. What that does to fencing is specific: there aren't enough streets here for any single lot pattern to take over, so the length of a run is set by the lot you own, not by the way the street was laid out around it. The fence company page compares the materials themselves and what each one asks of a long run.
Only 366 homes in Dacula are rented
Of the 2,206 Dacula homes with somebody living in them, 366 are rented, which leaves ownership at 83.4 percent. Five homes in six is a high share anywhere, and it's exactly the ground a shade structure wants, since a pergola or a roofed cover pays itself back in summers, not in months. Ownership that concentrated also means most of these yards have had the same person looking at them for a long stretch, which is usually why the call arrives with a very specific complaint.
No water for a mile and a half in any direction
There's no lake, pond, reservoir or river inside Dacula, and none in the mile and a half of ground around it either. So the usual reason people give for screening a porch, which is standing water and what breeds over it, doesn't really apply out here. The honest case in Dacula is the roof and the season instead: a screened room stays in use through the wet middle of a Georgia summer, and an open deck doesn't. The screened porch page takes bare screen, a screened room under its own roof, and full glass in that order.
High ground, from 840 feet up to 1,140
The ground in Dacula runs from 840 feet to 1,140 and averages 1,039, much nearer the top than the bottom. Most of the town is high ground, and the 300 feet of change is gathered at the edges of it instead of spread evenly through every back yard. So a retaining wall answers for a minority of Dacula lots, not for the town. It's the right call where the high ground stops, and on those lots it's usually one wall doing one job, which is making the ground above it level enough to use.
Four named channels, and one of them is a river
The Alcovy River, Drowning Creek, Hopkins Creek and Palm Creek all cross the Dacula line. Four channels inside one small town means the yards don't all send their water in the same direction, and which one yours feeds has four possible answers, not one. Where a lot steps down toward a channel, the walkway and the steps that reach it are a stair problem before they're a paving problem, and taking them in that order is what keeps a new hard surface from pushing water somewhere nobody asked for.
Where a fire pit actually wants to go
Siting is answered by where the seating already is and how much clearance the house wants from it, and that's a question for the yard, not for a map. Once it's settled, building one falls to hardscape, and a guide to fire pit shapes covers the rest.
Dacula, and the drive east
Dacula sits east of Atlanta in Gwinnett County, and it's the only town in that county we take work in. At this distance a job gets its own run of days on the calendar, which is why a whole yard suits us better out here than one small repair. The gallery is where the finished work is.
Further reading
Finished in Dacula
Jobs from around here
New elevated deck with railings and a long stair run to grade, Dacula, Georgia
New elevated deck with railings and a long stair run to grade, Dacula, Georgia
Deck extended and enclosed as a screened porch under a new gable roof, with horizontal metal railings and stained stairs, Adairsville, Georgia
Poured concrete circular driveway curving around a planted island at a two story home, Atlanta, Georgia
Eighty-five miles east is a long way. Do you really come to Dacula?
We have already. There's a deck we built out there. What we won't pretend is that we can swing by on a Tuesday to look at one loose board, so it's worth telling us the full extent of what you want done.
The stairs are the part I dislike. Can they be rebuilt without touching the deck?
Usually. A stair run is its own structure and it can be laid out again on its own, though on a deck standing well off the ground the landing at the bottom tends to move with it.
Can a pergola go on a deck that's already there?
Yes, if the frame under the deck can carry the posts. That's decided beneath the surface instead of on it, which is why pictures of the underside are the first thing to send.
Nearby
Other towns we cover
Dacula deck or yard to sort out?
Dacula is the eastern edge of where we go, so the drive gets weighed against the size of the job. Call 706-879-8873 and describe the whole yard on the first call, not the one corner of it that's bothering you.