It is very important to build the deck footings in the right locations.  There are two principle methods for accurately laying out the footing locations based on your plans.  It usually helps to have the ledger board installed to give you two fixed positions at the house to work off of.  Remember that the dimensions on your plan are drawn in two dimensions.  You must keep your lines or tapes level in order to avoid distorting the shape of the deck in three dimensional space.  Laying out footings is usually a two-person job.  You will need an open space to work in, you must move anything that will interfere with your lines or tapes in the site area.

Batter Boards - This method is the most commonly used; you will need a cloth tape measurer, some wooden stakes, and a roll of twine.  Drop a plum bob from the corners of your ledger board and set two stakes next to the house. You can start here in order to layout the perimeter of your deck by tying string between 1x2 wooden stakes set perpendicular to one another.  Try to keep the string level and at least a foot off of the ground.  Working off of this perimeter you should be able to determine and mark the center points of footing locations with paint or stakes. This works well for square decks but can get kind of dicey with irregular shapes like octagons. 

Triangulation – This is a more high tech method that involves using a computer design program like AutoCAD to use basic geometric principles to locate the centers of your footing locations in plan.  Triangulation works particularly well with laying out complicated deck shapes accurately.  You will need to work off of two fixed points along the house, the distance between which will form one side of your triangle.  You will take the specific dimensions from each to these endpoints to the centers of each footing using different colors on the plan.  (see below)  You now know the three lengths of the sides of a triangle.  You will then hook two 50’ cloth tape measurers to the fixed locations along the house where you drew the circles and pull each tape to its respective dimension as it is listed on the plans.  If your tapes are held level; when you pull these tapes tightly together you will form a precise triangle directly above the center points of the footings. 

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