Lofted Room/Decking-Foundation and Floor Framing
Hey
Some background: I’m designing and building a house myself, my first one.
I’ve finished the design but I’m trying to figure the best foundation/floor framing/footing options for a specific loft/porch/deck scenario. The home is 32’x48’ salt box style, East coast zone 5. Currently my foundation is a cinder block stem wall with interior concrete piers. 2×6 studs, standard advance framing approach…
On a short end of the home, I was envisioning having a portion of the floor of my lofted bedroom, serve as porch cover for the entry door. If you can imagine, along the 32’ side (starting at the tall salt box end) there will be 12’ of wall reaching straight up to the roofline, then the next 10’ will be underneath the bedroom loft (8’ deep) the remaining 10’ (also 8k’ deep) will be essentially exposed decking.
My hiccup is, I was planning on just creating the 32×48 foundation, framing out a floor then calling it a day, knowing I might have to frame the exposed deck separately for water issues, however I’m unsure of the post to support the corner of the loft (porch cover). I’m not sure if that should be supported on its own pier or not. Meaning would I have to tetris the shape of my stem wall, then pier up my support 8×8 post to catch the corner of the loft.
Should I be concerned with the single post sinking or settling at a different rate from the rest of the house?
Is there a concern tying the house to the structure of the deck so thoroughly?
Is there a way to support everything on the rectangular stem wall, and maybe frame the floor and deck in a way to protect against water damage?
Replies
I do not think it will be practical to frame a simple rectangle and try to somehow make one corner treated.
consider floor elevations. you probably want the porch part to be lower than the interior floor (so wind blown rain and snow and leaves and the like have a downhill path to the outside)
What do you have in mind for floor joists?
What do you have in mind for the porch deck?
What do you plan for the crawl space, and how far do you plan your floor level above grade?
You could build a single deck and waterproof the floor of the porch part. Something like porcelain tile. Again, the floor elevation comes into play, and on a crawl space, there would not be a clear path for you to notice when it starts to leak.
Probably best to make the porch exterior space.
The concerns for the corner concrete pier would be the same as those you put inside the house footprint. It needs to be installed below the frost line, on undisturbed soil, and sized for the soil and the load.
the framing details of the second floor will be interesting.
You would be wise to get an engineer to review and approve your design.
Thank you for the replies. Very helpful. I got delayed a bit but these are very helpful comments. I'll need to do some rethinking a little I think. Thank you.
If it was me, I would plan a single footing pour, with the footing a small rectangle inset to the larger one. (beefing up the corner and bearing points for deck supports as indicated)
framing dimensions for the main house is going to end up different than that for the deck/porch.
Designing and building your own house sounds like an exciting project!