Determining The Height Of A Stair Landing
Anyone who's interested in stair construction should
understand how to determine the height of the stair landing. This is
often one of the most confusing and difficult things for most carpenters
who work in the construction industry today.
I will try to simplify this process so bear with me. The first thing
that you're going to need to do is determine how many steps there are on
the stairway. For our example, we will use 13 steps which will be the
horizontal section of the stairway that you actually step on while
climbing the stairs and the vertical sections which we will call the
stairway risers.
In almost every stairway, you will have one extra stair riser than your
stair tread's. In our example we are going to have 14 risers and 13
steps or stair treads. If our stair landing is going to be seven risers
from the floor, you simply multiply seven equal riser measurements and
this will give you the overall distance that the stair landing will be
off of the ground.
Let's say that our individual stairway riser is 7 inches. We multiply
seven stair risers times our 7 inch rise and this will give us 49
inches. Our new stair landing will be 49 inches from the top of the
finished floor to the top of the stair landing.
Now here's the secret that most people mess up on. You need to subtract
the thickness of your stair landing sheathing from the overall
measurement, before you install your stair landing joist or stair
landing framing members. Here's another example, you're going to use
3/4" plywood sheeting for your stair landing.
You will simply deduct three quarters of an inch from your 49 inch
overall measurement, before you frame your stair landing. That way when
you're finished, the overall measurements from the top of the stair
landing to the top of the finished floor will be 49 inches.
That wasn't that hard was it.