What to charge to build a deck
Price a deck by the square foot, and build that price from two halves: the frame, which comes off the plans, and the decking, which is rows of boards you can count. This page counts the boards and takes everything else as your own figures: the lumber and the hardware the plans call for, your hours, the permit and the trips. A price above all of that, divided by the square feet, is your price for a square foot. It is for wood. Composite decking is laid to its maker's figures, and they are not here.
By TailGateBid. .
Two decks of one size are not one job
A price for a square foot is easy to say and easy to get wrong, because the square feet are only the top. One deck sits a step above the grass. Another of the same size stands on tall posts, with a stair and a rail all the way round. The boards are the same. The frame, the hours and the plans are not.
So this page keeps the two apart. The boards are counted from the size. The frame, the footings, the hardware, the rail and the steps go in as one figure that you take off the plans, and the hours have a box for each half.
Nothing here sizes a joist, a beam, a post or a footing, and nothing says what a deck needs in order to be safe or legal. That comes from the plans, an engineer or your building department.
From the deck to the boards
- How far the boards run, times how far the deck is across them, is the square feet, and the size of the job.
- Rows: the distance across, in inches, divided by a board and its gap, rounded up. The Southern Forest Products Association puts decking sold as 6 inches wide at 5 and a half inches dressed, and the American Wood Council's deck guide says: "Space decking boards approximately 1/8" apart."
- Boards: the rows times the run is the feet of board. Add your extra for cuts, divide by the length you buy and round up.
- The boards at what one costs you, plus everything else on the plans, is the materials.
- Your hours on the frame and your hours on the decking, at what an hour costs you, plus the materials and whatever else the job costs, is what the deck costs you. Pick a price above it and divide by the square feet.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the deck
These boxes turn the deck into square feet and boards to buy, and put the size, the materials and your hours in the calculator below. They count the boards. Everything under the boards comes off your plans.
The two together are the square feet, and the size of the job.
It starts at 5.5, what decking sold as 6 inches wide measures.
It starts at 0.125, an eighth of an inch.
The boards are counted from this length, and so is what they cost you.
It starts empty: no source we would name gives a figure. Type your own.
The frame, the footings, the hardware and the fasteners, the rail and the steps: your own takeoff, as one figure.
Type how far the boards run and how far the deck is across them. The square feet show here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each square foot.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
One deck, priced
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say the boards of a deck run 16 feet and the deck is 12 feet across them: 192 square feet. Say the boards are 5.5 inches wide with an eighth of an inch between them: 26 rows and 416 feet of board. Say you add 10% for cuts and buy 16 foot boards: 29 of them. Say a board costs you $24, a made-up price: $696. Say everything else on the plans comes to $1,850, also made up: $2,546 of materials. Say the footings and the frame take 28 hours and the decking, the rail and the steps 36: 64 hours, which at $57.05 an hour is $3,651.20. Say the permit fee and the trips come to $210. The deck costs you $6,407.20. Charge $9,154 and you keep $2,746.80, which is $30 of every $100. That is $47.68 a square foot.
The same deck at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $7,120 | $712.80 | $10 |
| $8,009 | $1,601.80 | $20 |
| $9,154 | $2,746.80 | $30 |
| $10,679 | $4,271.80 | $40 |
| $12,815 | $6,407.80 | $50 |
What the wood council's guide says, and what it leaves to others
- The American Wood Council's deck guide, DCA 6, is written from the 2015 International Residential Code. Its line on fastening the boards is: "Attach decking to each joist with 2-8d threaded nails or 2-#8 screws." The deck board calculator counts those fasteners once you type the joist spacing from your plans.
- The guide also says: "All construction and materials must be approved by the authority having jurisdiction." That is why this page stops at the boards.
- Whether your job needs a permit and an inspection is your building department's to say, not ours. Where it does, the fee is a cost of the job and each inspection is a wait: leave room for both in the price and in the date you promise.
What a price for a square foot leaves out
- The rail and the steps. Neither grows with the square feet: a rail grows with the edge, and steps grow with the height. Put each on the quote as its own line, or say plainly that your price for a square foot has them in it.
- The old deck. Taking one down and hauling it off is hours and loads. Price it apart, or say on the quote that it is not included.
- The days before you dig. 811 is the free national before-you-dig service, and its own site says every digging project, regardless of depth, requires contacting it a few days in advance: Common Ground Alliance, 811 Before You Dig. Leave room for those days in the date you promise.
- Getting the lumber there. A delivery fee, or your own trips with a trailer. See what a trip costs you, and count each one.
- The plans. If you draw them or pay someone to, that is a cost of the job. It goes in the box for anything else.
- The deposit. Lumber is bought before the first post is set. Work out a deposit and the sales tax, and check what your state allows before you ask for one.
The hours are yours
The boxes count boards. They do not say how long a deck takes to build. We found no figure for that at a source worth naming, and the height, the ground and the crew are all yours.
After each deck, write down the square feet and the hours on each half. Hours on the decking divided by the square feet is one figure. Hours on the frame is another: keep it apart, because two decks of one size can have very different frames. A few decks in, those two are what to price the next one from.
On a quote
In TailGateBid a deck can go on a quote as a line charged by the square foot, with the rail, the steps, the tear-out and the permit as lines of their own. Two kinds of board can be two options with their own prices, and your customer picks one and signs on their own phone.
The hour under every figure on this page is what an hour costs you. If that is still a guess, start there.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
- The box for the width of a board starts at 5.5 inches. In the Southern Forest Products Association's table of standard sizes, decking sold as 6 inches wide is that width once it is dressed, and a board sold as 4 inches wide is 3.5. Starting at the wider is our choice. Southern Forest Products Association, Standard Sizing, . (our choice, change it)
- The box for the gap between boards starts at 0.125 of an inch, which is an eighth. The American Wood Council's deck guide says: "Space decking boards approximately 1/8" apart." Starting there is our choice. The guide is for wood decking: another kind of board has its maker's own figure. American Wood Council, DCA 6: Prescriptive Residential Wood Deck Construction Guide, . (our choice, change it)
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
Related
- Deck board calculatorA wood deck's size into rows, feet of board, boards to buy and fasteners, with lines to put on a quote. Boards only.
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- Trip and minimum chargeIn the example, a job 25 minutes away costs $93.92 before any work is done. See what your smallest job costs with the trip in it.
- Deposit and sales taxOn a sample quote, 7.25% of $2,035.00 is $147.54 of tax, and a 10% deposit on the total is $225.75.
- Fence installationAdd up the runs, count the posts, and see what a price for each foot of fence leaves you.
On a TailGateBid quote a deck can be one line by the square foot, with the rail, the steps and the permit as lines of their own.
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