Hi, I am building a low deck and am leaning to having no tie into the house, make if free standing w/ footings. It will be 12″ or so off the ground. I hear of tie ins leaking, rotting ect, and figure a 1″ gap will never hold water / rot. Any major problems with this plan? thanks
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nada
Free standingdecks are common. Pour footing a few feet away and cantalever the joists back to the house. If you do not install a rim-joist along this end, Blocking will work just fine. The finished product can come close to the home(1/2" is fine). With attached decks, the deck's finish height with respect to the interior floor's grade is typically about 1 to 2" lower . As for free standing decks, I don't see why you can't par it up with the interiors floor grade.
figure a 1" gap will never hold water / rot. Any major problems with this plan? thanks
Should not be a problem, really.
Only "hiccup" is that it can be a good idea to work out the finish trim details first, and then bump/slide them in over the in-place structure, and then finish the rest of the deck.
This prevents an annoying uh-oh as a person is installing a nice decorative rim edge or the like and getting around to the house and having ... er, ah, an "interesting architectural feature," yeah, that's it, it's a feature.
Where is this going? Region as much as where on the house. If you are in frost country and need really, really deep holes for piers, cantilevering them makes a lot of sense. If you are in snow country a slight elevatation change from indoors can help to not sweep snow inside with swinging doors.
Hmm, you really don;t have much height for much more than a 2x6 frame, so consider extra footings since you will have a very compact frame.