>I found a great program that takes all the frustration out of designing the stairs; number of steps, pattern of the risers, etc. It only cost about $12, but it is well worth the investment if you are planning on doing the work yourself. I went online and did a search and ended up here: www.Shalla.Net The guy is great, very responsive to any questions I had, and the program worked like a charm. You're wondering why would someone pay for an Excel spreadsheet, but if you have ever done the stairs yourself, then you know that it's a small amount of money for what you get.
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>No, I do not get a cut or know the guy other than from buying his product, but when I see something great, I want to share it.
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>www.Shalla.Net

That does look like a good value. For anyone who hasn't manually built stairs, you have to know what you're doing, do your basic measurements (like rise and run) accurately, and carefully lay out and cut your stringers. As the spreadsheet provider points out, make one small mistake on a single stringer and that's a greater cost than this program. It's not rocket science, but you do need to be careful. This spreadsheet eliminates most of the chances for error.

Do you know if the package includes other stuff you need to know:

- that it's usually a good idea to pour a concrete pad for the bottom of the stairs, and that you have to locate it so the rise vs. run of the stairs from the deck to the pad is within an acceptable range of values

- putting in risers on outdoors stairs is (IMO) a mistake. It creates traps for dirt, leaves etc. between the bottom of each riser and the back of the tread below it. These traps don't dry, and they accelerate rot. I live in rainy North Vancouver (~90-100" rain per year), my rear deck is overhung by an 80+ foot spruce, 2 large bigleaf maples and a very bushy ornamental Japanese maple so this is important to me ;)

- even if you don't use risers, a trap is formed at the rear of the topmost tread, against the joist. It would be better to leave a gap between the deck joist and the rear of the topmost tread, but this causes problems of its own: if you use a same-depth tread, the tread juts out, but if you rip a tread say 1/4" narrower chances are you've just ripped off all of the pressure treatment, and if you're using radius-edged decking and treads, the ripped edge looks ugly. I don't know the solution to this.

- even if you don't use risers, if treads overhang one another (i.e. front of upper tread overhangs rear of lower tread) then crud tends to build up on the rear of each lower tread, beneath that overhang. Radius-edged treads help a lot with this.

- using closed stringers for the outsides of the stairs is structurally much superior but makes a fiddly job even fiddlier ;)

- radius-edged decking stays much cleaner than square-edged. If you keep gaps between deck boards or treads at least 1/4" then evergreen needles will pretty much fall through or get pushed through the gaps by breezes or rain. Bigleaf maple leaves (out here, they're typically bigger than a dinner plate) you can't do much about ;)

In some cases, if you plan things carefully you can use pre-cut wood stringers, or better yet, powder-coated steel ones. It can sometimes be worth it to locate your pad so you can use steel stringers.