Structural deck flooring
Structural deck flooring is the floor sheeting (particleboard, plywood, or compressed sheet) glued and screwed over joists to form the rigid platform in platform framing.
Ask Chalkline about this →Structural deck flooring is the structural floor sheeting, particleboard flooring, structural plywood, or compressed fibre-cement sheet, glued and screwed (or nailed) over the timber floor joists to form a rigid, level working platform and the base for the floor finishes above. Laying it is the defining step in platform framing: once the deck is down, that storey becomes the platform the walls above are built on.
The common deck materials are particleboard flooring (the tongue-and-groove yellow-edged sheet made to AS 1860.1) for internal dry areas, structural plywood where a thinner or stronger sheet is wanted, and compressed fibre-cement sheet for wet areas and balconies. The sheets are glued to the joists with a construction adhesive and mechanically fixed: gluing is what stops the floor squeaking and lets the deck and joists act together. Fix it to the manufacturer’s nailing or screwing pattern and the joist spacing the sheet is rated for, not by eye.
Keep the deck dry until the roof is on, or use a flooring grade rated for the exposure. Standard particleboard flooring that gets rained on swells at the joints and has to come up, which is a costly redo once the frame is loaded. See platform framing and AS 1684 for the framing it sits on.
Also known as: Structural flooring, floor decking, floor sheeting, yellowtongue.
Category: Materials / Framing and flooring.
Related
See also
References
- AS 1860.1:2017 Particleboard flooring, Installation, Standards Australia (verified 2026-05-24)
- AS 1684 Residential timber-framed construction, Standards Australia (verified 2026-05-24)
Last updated: 2026-05-30. Verified: 2026-05-24. Quarterly review for currency.