Balcony Question

Shold these joists have been run through the wall and attached to the interior floor joists.

Full deck.jpg

Bourrough 038.jpg

Bourrough 037.jpg

How is the ledger board attached?

What is the beam bearing on?

deck.jpg

No, but the ledger should be lagged to the sill.

Need to know the footer,are there lag bolts,any bolts thru the post and ledger board ?

Unless I’m missing something, this whole thing looks like an accident waiting to happen.

deck2.jpg

Double sided tape?

I did not see any lag bolts in the ledger. The footers in my opinion are to small, less than 16x16. The beam is only nailed.

I agree with Mr. Larson. That thing is scary. . .

Deck Construction Guide

Chris, you need to fix your link.

I pointed out as many defects as I could and recommend evaluation by a licensed professional.

Many of these retal cabins in the Smoky Mountains are built the same way. Maybe the hills are too steep for the building inspector to make it up there.:shock:

Thanks Mike, fixed. :slight_smile:

As far as the ledger… possibly too small an area to see what they did.

Some areas, albeit small allow doubling of the 2x materials and carriage bolting to the post. That looks like a single piece of 2x material. I have seen even recently, permitted decks with a 2x carriage bolted to both sides of a 6x post…

I can’t find anything right about that install shown. The ledger tends to bolted every 16" in a staggered pattern in most areas i’ve seen. I’ve also used and seen Simpson Strong Drive Screws (SDS) in a 16" on center pattern with 2 sds screws every 16. There may be a nice sized galvy bolt on just either side of the pic… :slight_smile:

Hey, give em credit. They DID use some flashing of some type…

Tim

I just noticed the picture of the balcony above the other… I’m gonna puke.

What the heck is the upper deck/balcony bearing on… the one below it…

ouch. I like how the posts are offset from one another and bearing on the single piece of 2x (at least it looks like a single piece of 2x)

Some guys take shortcuts when they scab a project in. That deck could/will give more than a scab to SOMEBODY.

Tim

ps
I hereby take away any credit I gave them for the flashing.

The railings are real nice, and that’s what sold the place! :smiley:

This may be helpful to some:

http://www.awc.org/Publications/DCA/DCA6/DCA6.pdf

The deck shown appears to be approximately 4 or 5 feet wide. Therefore, the load from only 2 or 2.5 feet are carried on the single 2x beam. If the beam has a maximum span of 8 feet, snd would require a scetion modulus of approximately 11.5 to handle the uniform load. If it’s a 2x8, the section modulus is about 13, and if it’s a 2x10, the section modulus is about 21. Then it must handle the concentrated load from the post above, which is something on theorder of 1200 pounds. The beam appears to be a 2x8, so it is unlikely to be adequate to carry both uniform and concentrated loads.

If the maximum load on a post is 2200 pounds, depending on the load-bearing capacity of the soil, a footing size of just over 12x12 would be adquate, and a smaller foting could quite well be adequate if the soil value is more than 2,000 PSF.

The methods of connecting beam to post and ledger to building are not readily visible in the photos.

But as stated by Patrick

Thanks for your calculations but I think we can all agree that this deck is unsafe, right?

No, not at all. It may be perfectly safe. We don’t have enough information to make that judgment.

Please explain. How can the nailed beam and no lack of adequate attachment of the ledger be safe?

I agree the information provided could be more extensive and it’s always tough inspecting from pictures but do you think there is enough to call out further evaluation?