A platform is often referred to as a landing or small
floor. The black arrow in the picture below is pointing to a metal
stairway platform or landing. Platforms can be located at the top,
bottom or at almost any level of the stairway.
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Platform Construction Advice
If you're planning on building a stairway with a platform, make sure
that you use the right materials, in order to build a strong landing
that's structurally sound. Trust me on this one, the least you can do is
make sure that all of your nails actually hit their targets.
It was probably about 18 years ago and when I was contacted to install a
few stairways, for a large hotel. The contractor got my phone number
from another contractor and they told me that I could name a price,
(that got my attention) because they were having problems finding anyone
who could actually build this particular type of stairway.
When I arrived at the job site, the contractor showed me a sample
stairway that he had built himself. When I looked underneath to examine
the stair platform, I was shocked. He had three nails going through a 2
x 6 ledger, into 3 x 4 wall studs. Everything looked good, except for
one thing. He had missed most of the 3 x 4 studs, with his nails.
This is understandable, when you're using a nail gun, but he didn't use
a nail gun and I couldn't believe my eyes. I asked him, how long the
stairway had been installed and whether or not anyone was using it.
He told me that it has been installed for at least two months and was
used on a daily basis by almost everyone, going up stairs. That's when I
informed him about my stairway inspection. I couldn't believe that this
stairway was still standing up, and neither could he.
If you going to build a stairway platform, make sure that you use the
correct lumber sizes, building hardware and do your best to actually
fasten these components together properly. Just because the stairway was
still standing, didn't mean that it wasn't going to fall down
eventually, once someone started to move a few heavy objects up and down
the stairway.
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