Mr. Deck | Products

SnapTap™ Gutters US Patent 7,028,437 B2

Mr. Deck has an accessory item to make a deck permanently dry below it, called the SnapTap™gutter system. This drainage system is different from any other deck-drainage system because it drains the deck from between the planks whereas all the other systems drain from between the joists. It can only be used with my specially-profiled solid-plastic plank under protection of another Mr. Deck patent: US 7,234,281 B2.

The gutter is made of black ABS plastic . It comes in 12-foot long continuous channels that can be cut right along with the plastic boards. One ABS gutter can be glued to another ABS gutter, allowing gutters to extend for the length of the longest plastic board: 24 feet.

Each plank is notched to receive one flange of the plastic gutter. Each gutter is installed in the plank as the plank is being laid. The flanges of each channel are captured by the opening in the bottom corners of adjacent boards.

Once the boards are screwed tightly to the framework, the SnapTap™ channels are held firmly within the solid plastic and do not leak. The way it works is that the plastic compresses down upon the top edges of their shared gutter, giving it a permanent seal just like a lid on a jar.

The planks are screwed down from the top side over each joist just like wooden planks are fastened down. It's a "snap" to "tap" the gutter into the planking before fastening. That's all there is to it and it's easy to do.

The gutters are designed to carry the runoff water between normally spaced boards over to each edge of the deck. The deck does not need to be sloped. If you have sags in the deck more than 3/4 inch then you can drain the gutters into half-pipes right in the middle of the deck as discussed below. And if you have a 2 inch overhang on each side of the deck, you can quite easily add standard gutters to carry away the run-off .

The SnapTap gutters are not visible from above and each appears only 1 inch wide from below.

The gutters come with our specially contoured plank. The price for plank and gutter together is $5.79 per lineal foot plus freight & handling. Minimum quantity is 50 planks per order. Available lengths of plank range from 8 ft. to 16 ft. in 4 ft. increments. All planks are standard grade stock.

Because I have used the words "permanently dry" above, I get a lot of inquiries about using this system for a roof atop an enclosed room. This system was not meant to be used as a roofing substitute. It is not a roofing system and I make no claim that it would work in that application. It takes many more leak-prevention measures to enable this deck-drainage system to be used as a substitute for a roof.

Mr. Deck will assume no liability for any consequential damages that may result from such an unintended application of this product. I will not assist in nor advise about how to use this product in any non-standard way. Since we cannot prevent its use in any application unknown to us, consider yourself to be now legally advised about any non-standard usage of this product.

Framing The Deck To Keep It Dry Below

For an elevated deck which will use the SnapTap™ gutter system, the plank could be laid at a right-angle (90°) to the house wall. And that means running the joists parallel to the house. This is done by supporting the joists with beams anchored perpendicular to the house and supported by posts near the beams' exposed ends. By sloping these beams away from the wall 1/8 inch per foot the gutters can be made to drain to the front of the elevated deck.

Since the gutters are flush with the bottom of the planks, the entire deck run-off can be drained into a hidden 3-inch-diameter ABS plastic half-pipe gutter tucked tightly up to the bottom of the plank where the SnapTap gutters terminate. This peripheral drain pipe is hidden by running a border plank atop the rim-joist and facia board. The border plank is fastened to top of the rim joist and facia.

The outermost common joist is judiciously placed 2¼ inches back from the butt-ends of the planking so it can accommodate the half-pipe gutter. The half-pipe gutter is boxed in place by 4x blocking placed every 16 inches between the outermost common joist and the rim joist all along their length.

The half-pipe gutter is placed below the seam between the border plank and the planking. The SnapTap gutters are cut short of the ends of the planking by 1½ inches to provide a sufficiently open space for draining into the half-pipe gutter.

Plastic down-spouts can be connected into the half-pipe gutter and be run down one or more of the supporting posts. If architectural columns are used to hide the posts, these down-spouts can be hidden as well by running them inside the columns.

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