Monday, April 13, 2009

Texas Plat House gets handrails

Another dozen photos from the owners of the Texas Plat House today. They have installed rails around the decks and they look great.

Several of the houses that have been built from our plans have used cable rail, both for decks and for inside rails on the two story houses. Cable rails are great, because they are very transparent, and when you are surrounding your deck with railings its nice to use something that is fairly transparent so you can see the landscape beyond. The only downside is cable rail components can be expensive if you go with the nice hardware sold for this purpose. You can buy turnbuckles and crimping hardware and do it yourself for much less, but the Owners of the Texas Plat House came up with a great alternative.

Hog Panels. Thats right, Hog Panels. Welded wire mesh panels meant for building hog pens. You will notice that there are more horizontal bars at one end - this is typically put at the bottom of the pen to keep the hogs snouts in the pen. But they have turned them over. The heavy welded wire will be very durable, and its at least as transparent as a cable rail installation.

See more photos at the Flickr set for this house.

16 comments:

  1. Fantastic idea. How did the fasten to the wood framing so seamlessly?

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  2. I'm not sure. I see screw heads at the end of each rail, so it looks like they put a screw in at an angle at each end. There could be one on the inside, and one on the outside, possibly a third from the underside. There could also me a metal clip hidden under the wood stops that retain the wire panels.

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  3. Info back from the owner - she says:

    We used 3" coated deck screws on each end front and back of the top rail and the bottom rail. No fasteners at all for the "hog panels" the top, bottom and posts were dadoed and the panels fit right in the groove. Fit the panel in the bottom and sides and then when the top rail goes on it firms it right up, they will not be going anywhere!

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  4. way cool.
    I have to remember this.

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  5. Hey Bob - bookmark it and you won't forget.

    BTW, are you involved with CORA? I remember the post about you on Entrepreneur Architect. If you are not involved with CORA, please drop in at the messageboard and introduce yourself.

    http://coragroups.org/forum/

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  6. We will steal this idea for our house completely...it's perfect...and affordable! Pricing out cable rail systems had me so depressed!!

    Thanks for sharing.

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  7. my pleasure - send pictures when you are done!

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  8. Cool stuff. I built a fence for someone's yard just like this years ago. However, I didn't dado grooves for the panels. This is a much smarter way!

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  9. Great Railing. The hog wire looks to stainless steel. What gauge did they use?

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  10. I'm pretty sure its galvanized and not stainless, but a good heavy galvanized coat. I don't know the gage of the wire, but it was quite heavy and they related needing a serious bolt cutter to clip the wires.

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  11. thanks greg. i am putting together a similiar detail for a client with a dog run. I am concerned about the possibilty of the galv. being poisonous to man's best friend if the fencing becomes a chew toy.

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  12. Huh. I couldn't answer that. Galvanizing is zinc. No idea what that might do to a dog, but its no different than galvanizing used in the wire of a chain link fence - I think that is used for dog pens all the time.

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  13. Where can you purchase these hog panels?

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  14. I think most Ag supply dealers will have something like this. Have you tried a google search?

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  15. i love this look, does any one else have any additional photos using hog panels??

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  16. A lot of people really like these - let us know when you use them in a project.

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