Wooden Stairs down a hill

by Patricia Brown
(Newnan, GA USA)

I have a total stair run of 176" and a total stair rise of 72.5". I am thinking I will need a landing 1/2 way down the hill to achieve "standard rise and run".

I am unsure of the placement of this landing, size needed, etc. to achieve uniformity between the upper and lower stairs.

I plan on using 2X12 stringers and will have the stringers attach to a 2 X 8 on the outside of the upper deck with the first run below the top of the deck.

I really need a mathematical genius to figure this out (it's a bit beyond what a calculator and I can accomplish). Any help with specific dimensions is greatly appreciated.

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Editor's Comments

It sounds like the best way to help out a beginner faced with a math question for a stair stringer is to point you to this little calculator.

It works great and should do the trick for you.

But what you will have to do is a little bit of prep work first. You need to break the distances down into two parts first.

So have a basic idea where that middle landing will be and then base the calculation of the first stringer on the rise from the deck to the landing.

Then get a ballpark idea of the rise to take the next stringer down to the bottom landing area. Approach it in two stages for going down a hill like this.

Hills and slopes are challenging because it is hard to get really accurate elevations.