Concealed fastening of decking boards
09 August 2016
High-quality decking timbers are an eye-catching feature of every garden. Their refined appearance creates a stylish transition between the house and garden. To bring out the best in decking boards, concealed fastening is recommended.
Manufacturers now offer high-quality decking clips made of glass fibre-reinforced plastic for concealed and indirect fastening of timber and WPC decking boards without grooves – such as the Clipper sets from HECO-Schrauben GmbH & Co KG.
The HECO®-Clipper sets ensure elegant installation of decking boards without holes detracting from the visual appearance of the timber boards. They can be used for boards between 120mm and 150mm wide, and can be assembled easily, quickly and precisely. They provide three main benefits in decking construction: They allow fastenings to be concealed; act as spacers between the boards; and provide constructional timber protection. An additional benefit of using the Clipper as an indirect means of fastening is that the decking boards can swell or shrink in any direction.
When building timber decking it may be necessary to properly prepare and fill the substrate to compensate for ground unevenness. Once the bearing points of the timber decking have been prepared, timbers with a sufficient load bearing capacity must be selected to ensure the substructure is constructed correctly. Ideally, the material used for the square timbers should be the same as the material used for the decking boards because the expansion and shrinkage characteristics of the substructure and covering will then be similar, which increases the overall service life of the decking. The number of supporting beams, and the distance between them, varies according to the decking design. They depend on the existing subsoil, the timber used for the decking and the anticipated live load. To assist with planning HECO recommends using roughly fifteen decking Clippers per square metre as a guide. Seven boards are required to construct a width of 1m using 14cm wide boards, laid with 5mm gaps. Assuming two supporting timbers are 50cm apart, two Clippers are required per running metre of board.
Two Clippers per board multiplied by seven boards laid side-by-side means that fourteen Clippers are required per square metre of decking. The number of Clippers required varies depending on the width of the boards or spacing of the substructure.
