Low decks behind York terraces

The garden behind a York terrace is often short, overlooked, and a step or two below the back door. A deck here earns its place by being calm and low. Our team would rather build that than a platform that tries to be a room in the air.

Close to the ground

The Planning Portal's ordinary starting point for a house is a deck no more than 30 cm above the ground, covering no more than half the garden once extensions and outbuildings are counted, and kept off the land in front of the main front wall. In a short rear yard that first limit is the one people feel. Thirty centimetres is a low step, not a stage. Measure it from the ground that is already there, including a fall towards the back fence. A deck that is level with the door at the house and 40 cm up at the far end is not "low" at the far end.

Those limits are for houses. A flat, a maisonette or the grounds of a listed building sit outside them, and a conservation area adds a limit at the side of the house. Planning Data shows the boundary. City of York Council decides the edge.

Air still matters when the deck is low. Joists should not sit in the soil. A small void, open at the edges, lets the timber dry. Boards stop short of the wall. We do not seal that gap. Rain needs somewhere to fall that is not the brickwork.

The step from the back door

The door sets the level people notice. If the sill is already close to the yard, the deck can meet it with a small step down, and the surface stays under the 30 cm idea. If the sill is higher, do not bury the wall by building the whole yard up to the threshold. Take the step outside, on the deck, in one even rise. An outward-opening door needs its swing kept clear. A mat can sit on the deck. It should not become a ramp that closes the gap at the wall.

Our page on door routes into a terrace covers how boards arrive. The step itself is simpler. One broad tread is kinder than two mean ones squeezed into a yard that is already short. If the drop from door to garden is only a few centimetres, a single shallow step is enough, and a rail would only get in the way. Where a person could fall more than about 600 mm, a guard is the usual Building Regulations idea. That is a different garden, usually one that falls away, and it belongs with balustrade heights.

Neighbours and the fence

Terrace yards overlook each other. A low deck is easier on the neighbours than a platform with a view into the next house. Keep the surface below the fence rather than above it. If you want privacy, a screen fixed above head height on the boundary is a different object from the deck, and it can have its own planning question. We will say if a screen is starting to look like a wall. We will not pretend it is "just part of the boards".

The frame stays on your side of the boundary. Posts go in your ground. A shared fence is not a beam. If a neighbour's outbuilding already takes part of the light, we set the deck where a chair still gets the sun that remains, often against the house rather than at the dark end. In Wigginton the older plots are longer. A terrace may only have the square itself.

When a low deck is the wrong brief

Some doors are a storey up, above a basement yard or a sharp drop. A low deck cannot reach them. That is a raised deck, with posts, bracing, steps and almost certainly a guard, and it is likely to need an application because it will stand more than 30 cm above the ground. We build those too, and we would rather name them than stretch the word "low" until it means nothing. The raised decking page is the place for that brief.

A low deck is also wrong when it blocks the only route for bins and bikes. Leave a path. Half the garden, in the Portal's words, is a ceiling, not a target. Tell us the door height, the depth of the yard and whether there is a passage or only the hall. The quote starts from those facts.

Common questions about low decks