Following up on last week’s post: after modeling the existing house, I made the changes we had discussed. I also sent a drawing of the proposed deck to the structural engineer. He came back with some suggestions that make things simpler. The new deck is shown in the illustration above.
The Oakland house is situated on a hillside, overlooking a huge sloping back yard. The living areas are on the upper floor. The upper floor has no outdoor space in the back yard. Adding the deck off the kitchen allows the living areas to have a nice outdoor space without having to schlep chairs and food and BBQ stuff down the stairs. There are many other things we could do with this deck, but in the interest of economy, we are keeping things simple.
Because of how high the deck is above the ground, we need to use 6×6 posts. Since we are using 6×6 posts, it makes sense to use a 6″ wide beam. This gives us the capacity to span a longer distance, so we only need two posts. Yay! It looks cleaner and less fussy. I expect we will have some diagonal supports. I will add those in once he has sized them. But I like this version of the deck better.
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