So the way my home was constructed with doors on both my Kitchen and Master bedroom it makes logical sense to have one deck run the length of my home…60ft. Also my kitchen is a bumped out 15ft from main part of the house.
So putting a 10-15ft ledger on a home. That is a little work to do right and I’ve done that a few times.
My question is when you are running a ledger that long there must be some good techniques to follow or things to watch for?
Also if it is a really bad idea, or nearly impossible to get right, I could seperate it into two seperate decks.
One alternate idea is a small bridge between the two decks with a japanese gargen under and around the bridge.
Thanks for any insight.
Replies
Well, obviously you cannot find a single piece of wood that long, so it must be made of several pieces. But unless you're a really incompetent carpenter, getting one piece to start where the previous one ends is not a difficult task, and lining up the two pieces is fairly easy as well.
About the only issue to consider is where you make the splices -- you want them to be hidden, of course, and also want to consider that the area of the splice will be ever so slightly weaker than the middle of a long run, so maybe avoid a splice near a major beam attachment or some such.
I don't sproblem with one ledger at all. We rarely build decks that use only one board for a ledger. Use a transit or laser evel to set the height, choose straight lumber and go to town. You'll need to know how you're going to hold the ledger in place, bolts, lag screws, etc. and what they will be fastened too before you start. Most of the decks we build nowdays are disconnected from the house so the Building Dept can't force the rest of the house into compliance with the current code. In that case we set posts next to the house and run our framing from there.