Users of the American Wood Council’s DCA-6 Prescriptive Residential Wood Deck Construction Guide will notice red-lined addendum pages at the beginning of the online document. The changes reduce the southern pine spans for joists, beams and stair stringers. These changes stem from a reduction in southern pine design values. Deck builders will find substantially shorter spans for southern pine beams, joists and stair stringers.
A couple of for-instances:
- The maximum span for 2×10 joists at 16 in. o.c. spacing is now 14 ft. – 0 in. down from 15 ft. – 10 in. That’s an almost 2 ft. reduction in the span.
- Stair stringers cut from 2×12 southern pine can now only span a maximum of 6 ft. down from 7 ft. That means the number of treads and risers that can be cut for a set of southern pine deck stairs is reduced by one.
Back in January The American Lumber Standards Committee set June 1, 2013 as the implementation date for the reduced southern pine design values. The AWC added the addendum to the DCA-6 in May with an effective date of June 1.
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