Deck Builder in Ringgold, GA

3,435 people at the top of the map

Ringgold is 3,435 people in 1,520 homes, and it sits north of us by 43.7 road miles with 41.5 of those on the interstate. It's also a town we have finished work in: retaining walls, decks and fence lines.

There's more of it on the gallery, and Ringgold is in Catoosa County alongside Fort Oglethorpe and Lakeview. If you would rather talk than read, tell us what the yard needs.

Houses from 2001, and decks the same age

Half of Ringgold was finished by 2001. Housing at that age has usually gone gray on the surface and loosened at the fasteners while the framing underneath is still cut square to the house it hangs on.

So the question here is rarely whether to keep the deck. It's how much of it to keep, and that's answered from underneath. We have replaced decks in this town. A new build covers the case where the answer is none of it, and repair and replacement covers the case where the frame stays.

1,520 homes, and fence lines settled one lot at a time

Ringgold is a small town, 1,520 homes in all, and it sets its fence runs one lot at a time instead of by subdivision pattern. We have put fence lines in here, and what separates one fence material from another sits with the fencing service.

48.4 percent own here, and the rest rent

Ringgold is 48.4 percent owner occupied, so the 760 rented homes here slightly outnumber the 713 owned ones. A patio cover or a pergola is bought by the owner, so in a town balanced that finely the first question isn't what it should look like. It's who owns the wall it'll attach to. After that what decides everything is beam height, because a cover hung too low reads as a lean-to whatever it's built from.

The room you can still sit in at nine at night

A screened porch buys back the end of the day in August. That's the whole argument for one and it doesn't change street by street.

What changes is how far you take it. Screen keeps the bugs out and nothing else. Put a roof over it and you get the rain as well. Close it in with glass and you have added a room to the house, not a place to sit outside it. The screened porch page sets the three side by side.

708 feet to 1,039 feet

Elevation across Ringgold runs 708 to 1,039 feet, a spread of 331 feet, and on ground that moves that much inside one town line the walls are the work that keeps coming up. We have built them here.

What gets argued about on a wall is its height. What decides how it does is where it stops, because a run that dies into the slope at the wrong point hands the same water to the next few feet of yard. The retaining wall page works through what holds and what only looks like it does.

Little Chickamauga Creek, Peavine Creek, Tiger Creek

The Ringgold boundary is crossed by five named streams. On a lot that falls toward one of them the piece of work that sets everything else is the stair, not the slab. Get the run between the door and the flat ground right and the surface can be laid to it. Do it the other way around and you have built somewhere for water to sit. A patio, a walkway or a set of steps gets planned from the top of the fall down.

A fire pit and the way you get to it

A fire pit is worth having when there's somewhere to sit around it and something dry to walk on getting there after dark. That's why it tends to get drawn at the same time as the patio and the path, not added the following spring.

The fire pit guide is where the shapes and the seating distances live, and the building of one is hardscape work.

Further reading

• picking a wall material before anybody digs
• keeping a wood fence standing