Deck Spacers
Use door hinges between deck boards to gap them.
When installing new deck boards, we used 3½-in. door hinges as spacers. We inserted one leaf of the hinge between boards to gap them, and used the barrel of another hinge as a bearing point to pull things tight with a pipe clamp. If we needed wider spacing, we could have just inserted both leaves.
— Peter Oqvist, San Rafael, Calif.
Edited and illustrated by Charles Miller
From Fine Homebuilding #268
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View Comments
Great idea, going to have to try this one.
Just be sure you actually need to space the deck boards! I've seen too many quarter inch or 5 mm gaps increase to a half inch and more to give a blanket approval to spacing deck boards. On one deck, I zero spaced the PT Southern Pine and 6 months later the boards had spacings where you'd have to worry about a pencil dropping through.