Experiment
Stairs and ramps, designed instead of toggled.
A trial page, separate from the deck builder, for one idea: you describe each set of stairs or ramp you want — how many, where, what style, how many built landings you will accept, what to give up first — and the drawing works out the rest, telling you what it could not honour and what would fix it. Nothing here changes the deck page.
What’s in the number
The deck it serves
Where it sits
At the door
Ramp handrails
Railing
What would need fewer built landings
Each line was tried on the drawing before it was offered. Apply one and the controls above change to match.
Your stairs and ramps (each one is a preference the drawing tries to honour; count 0 switches it off)
How it decides
Fewer built landings, first.
Every set of stairs or ramp uses the deck as its top landing and the ground as its bottom one. A built landing is anything else: a platform where a ramp turns a corner or folds back, a landing part way up a long run, or one you ask for at the top or bottom. The designer tries every edge, direction and style it is allowed, keeps the ones that fit round everything else on the deck, and picks by your priorities in order — by default fewest built landings, then staying against the deck, then the shortest run.
When the result still has built landings, the advice box tries the levers David named — raise the ground at the foot, a built landing one riser up or down, a lower deck, a straight run, the 1:10 slope — on the drawing itself, and only offers the ones that actually reduce the count.
What the code says (NBC 2019, Alberta Edition)
- A door onto an exterior stair of up to 3 risers needs no landing (9.8.6.2, secondary entrance of a dwelling); beyond that a landing is required. Exterior stairs of up to 3 risers need no handrail (9.8.7.1); more than 3, one handrail.
- A guard is required only where the drop is more than 600 mm (24 in) (9.8.8.1).
- A ramp in a house may be as steep as 1:10 (9.8.5.4); a barrier-free ramp is 1:12, with a landing every 9 m of run, 1200 mm at a 90° turn, 1500 mm at a 180° turn (3.8.3.5). A house ramp rising 400 mm or less needs no handrails (9.8.7.1).
- A flight of stairs may rise at most 3.7 m before a landing (9.8.3.3). Spiral stairs are allowed in a dwelling (9.8.4.7).