I presently have an open 8 x 18 deck off the house (about 4ft off the ground) and would like to take it down to build a two tier deck. The top deck would be a 14 x 18 closed in area with roof and walls (screened openings – no glass – one patio door). The second tier would be an 8 x 18 open deck with stairs to the ground. I want a gable roof to create an open ceiling. This is not a winter space, for summer only. I’m questioning whether I should extend the post up to be part of the walls or just make my deck floor and erect walls.
I will be using the existing footings and maybe using the existing frame. I’ll add onto it and add more footings to extend the depth to 14 or 16 ft. Add more footings for the lower tier.
I have vinyl siding on the house and I suppose I will cut out the vinyl where my walls and gable meet the house?
Should I adjust the width of my walls so they are fastened to a stud?
After my walls are up, do I fasten a gable to the house and opposite wall, connect them with a ridge and build off that?
Is it better to order truss’s?
If anyone has some tricks or experiences that would help, I would appreciate it.
Thanks,
Fuzz
Replies
One issue...
You've asked a lot of questions, but I'm only going to address one issue, and you didn't even ask about that. Odds are, you can't just reuse the existing footings. They're sized (if anyone even gave it any thought) only for the load of a single deck. You're proposing to double that load. Plus, by adding a roof, you'll also need to add in the snow load. So, my guess is that your existing footings would probably be undersized by something like 70%.
It's not clear why adding a roof would change the snow load. I'm no more likely to shovel my deck off in the winter than I am to shovel off my roof (and the roof tends to blow clear better than the deck).
Code tends to be conservative. Imagine Christmas with the family there. Maybe at some future point the roofed deck became a sun room, and everyone is out there because, I don't know, the house is too warm or they all wanted to smoke Cubans. So, yeah, one designs for the potential maximum load, not the typical load.
Fuzz
Make sure the footings will handle it.
Ridge BEAM, not just a ridge board (with continuous posting to the ground or beam that'll handle it.............or wall ties..........at plate line or 1/3 up from plate line....
or
Trusses.
You'll need to deal with lateral bracing also.
Add blocking at the house rather than building to it's framing layout.
At least in these parts you'll have to either dig out the footings so they can be visually checked to be correct size, hire an engineer to sign off on them being adequate to support a deck, a second deck and a roof, or just pour new footings which will surely be required anyway.
I'd be equally shocked if the existing framing is worth reusing by the time it's taken off or opened up for new footings, not to mention the framing connection to the house is probably not up to current code.
My guess is you'll be frustrated with the amount of framing required, the cost of through bolted brackets and the entire process. If you were my client it would be a no-brainer to use my normal engineer to spec out everything and save the city using their red pen to dictate their version of what's required.
If it were my personal house rather than pay an engineer I'd simply use over sized beams and rather thick metal plate connections that are obviously overbuilding, but would pass the city.
One source of relatively inexpensive engineering can be the place that builds your trusses since they will have an engineers stamp. In the past I've wrapped some smaller items in with the trusses and their engineer went out of his way to quickly draw up and spec out what I needed.
This is one of those situations, at least around here, that is more exensive than it would appear on the surface.