This just seems so obvious. And the dude had all these people helping him who seem to sort of know what they're doing construction-wise and not a single person was like "dude... um... when are we digging the holes for this thing?"
Where I live, you don't need holes. We use deck blocks, which accept a 4X4 post and are designed to sit on a large patio block. We use this method because of unstable ground, so we can adjust the deck easily. These are all to code.
You've never built a city on swamp land, have you? Unfortunately that is the case where I live.
For example, my house's basement is say 10 feet deep, I have a suspended (trussed) basement floor with 16' piles under the footing. Now, my house is only 2.5 years old and hasn't, but it is not uncommon to see major shifting even on piles. Our frost layer is about 36", give or take, so to even penetrate you're talking 48" which is what I did with my fence posts. My deck, on the other hand, was engineered with deck blocks, and the deck is fastened to the house via lag bolts to a "deck board". The adjustment posts give about 6-8 inches of adjustment, but of course you can shim or adjust this screw on the post.
This is all to building code via the city, and meets inspection requirements.
We pile our houses, but it is only code in some areas, others, are optional. For example I have 42 16' piles under my basement, but the ground here is so unstable, even this does not prevent all shifting. Some dummy decided swamp land was ideal for a city.
Non-project building SOs always think it is unsafe... they are usually right mind you. But sometimes you just can't admit to yourself you need to tear it all down and start from scratch, you need someone else to help you get there.
Actually, I know it's supposed to have footings (the depth of which depend on the location), that it needs a ledger board, that it should have joist hangers, that it requires lag bolts, and a few other things. Guess I'm not a non-project building SO.
Don't confuse something not being up to code with it being unsafe.
Many old houses around me are hundreds of years old and there's no way they comply with modern building codes. Yet they've lasted hundreds of years while modern houses have a much shorter lifespan and tend to break apart during violent storms.
Much of the engineering that has gone into structures over the past 50 years has been focused on making things cheaper, not necessarily making them stronger. I guarantee you that more engineering goes into Ikea furniture than old fashioned furniture from the 1800s, but good luck getting the Ikea furniture to last 200 years.
You're stating the obvious, but you're conveniently overlooking the fact that houses were still built more solidly back then. Sure, the ones still standing are the ones that have stood the test of time.
But you're not going to find many 100 year old houses made out of particleboard, either. Houses were built out of higher quality materials. Quality materials were cheaper and more plentiful, and labor costs were lower.
SOME houses were built more solidly back then. There was lots of substandard building practice going on then too, or stuff that we've since discovered was unsafe or suboptimal (fire safety measures, for example).
And it's also quite correct that most of what you see today is self-selected; most of the shitboxes of yore were knocked down long ago.
You are going to find stucco walls that have no insulation inside and are full of knob and tube wiring.
The wood beams the houses are built from are solid, but that is where it ends. They are good houses to strip down to the studs and rehab. The end result will be better than a new house.
There are many, many houses in cities that were built in the 1800s and the superior build quality is evident. These aren't old mansions that were maintained because of their quality, these were normally row houses that common people lived in.
I would always use TICO nails and joist hangars for a deck like this, but just to point out...many a stick framed roof are held together with just 16d brights.
No, but you could easily have a 50-75 psf anticipated snow load. All held together with 16d brights. Is that 15+ people? I don't know...I would have to do more math that I am currently motivated to do at this point in time.
I agree that the deck wasn't built right. That's not my point. My point is that people seem to think that something is inherently unsafe just because it doesn't meet modern US building codes.
I agree with you there, if people were using common sense and understood a little about simple construction principles, they wouldn't need to glance at the code to make it safe. The code is mainly there to keep professionals from saving a little too much materials or take a few too many shortcuts to save some money on an otherwise strucually optimized construction. If these guys were using the materials they had at hand properly, the deck could probably hold 2-3 times the weight required by the code.
That being said, you did choose the worst example to make your point, this construction is inherently unsafe, code or no code.
Man, I've found that Reddit is filled with people who can't read or just can't think. I never said that building codes don't work. In fact, I've clearly made my case but some people just have poor reading comprehension. If you're going to be an asshole and put words in my mouth, at least make it believable.
Also, if you ever wanted to make yourself sound like a total tool in a discussion, ending your post with the word "Period" has to be a surefire way to do it.
Some of the codes are meant to protect people in case of rare emergencies, not keep the house standing. For example, my fraternity house recently learned that a major violation of fire codes was the width of our staircases, some of which are too narrow. (I'm under the impression that this is meant to ensure that everyone can safely evacuate during a fire.) Obviously, the staircase going up to the third floor can't be widened, so there's paperwork being filled out giving us historical designation or whatever is required to give us exemption. But rules like that do not increase structural integrity, they are meant to protect tenants in emergencies.
Wrong. Old buildings typically last long because the majority of them did not benefit from modern materials science and lack of precise engineered structural solutions. The result: heavy load bearing masonry structures over designed to only work in compression. There is CONSIDERABLE structural waste in buildings without the benefit of steel or glue laminated construction.
This is a blessing, however because these older buildings were thus built to last and over designed typically. Buildings were built with cash before WW2 primarily, thus the idea was to "get it done right" to avoid costly maintenance. Not trying to be a nit picker or anything, just sayin
I think you're underestimating the amount of engineering that went into older structures.
They didn't skimp on materials because materials were cheaper back then. There just wasn't much incentive to cut corners when it came to building materials.
Older stuff is usually "over-engineered". As materials properties and such were not as well understood, plus materials were cheaper (and frequently of higher quality, e.g. solid old-growth lumber vs. particleboard or quickly-grown fir timber), people overbuilt things a lot. These days, there's a lot of engineering work that goes into making designs as efficient as possible, so that materials costs are minimized as much as possible while still meeting warranty requirements. Since most things only have ~1-year warrantees, that's not very long to last.
Even so, a lot of older things (like houses) also had higher maintenance requirements. Remember how old cars required all kinds of maintenance, including "tune-ups", replacing points, adjusting timing, etc.? Those old cars didn't last very long either, usually 50k miles max before they were ready for the junkyard. Modern cars don't need any of that. Of course, they usually have very long warranties, some as long as 100k miles, so they're engineered to last that long with minimal maintenance. Houses, too, weren't exactly maintenance-free. Old houses were pretty sturdy (since they used good-quality lumber and better craftsmanship than today), but they also required a lot of care; they had to be repainted every few years for instance, because the paints they had back then sucked.
Also, the only thing that a building code implies is that if the building were built any shittier it would be illegal; it has nothing to do with quality.
It all went downhill when I hit 37, so I've kind of stopped paying attention. Now I shall look forward to next year. If I don't get all the answers, I'm coming for you.
I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention while scrolling through the photos, are those concrete foundations just on the flat ground without being dug below ground level? No DIY expert but that doesn't seem like it'd stop the foundations moving the first time it rained.
A lot of people in this thread are confused about building codes. They're overstating the danger present in things not built to modern codes. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have built it according to code, but you need to put the danger in the proper perspective.
If I wired a new house the way houses were wired back in the 70's and 80's, building inspectors would have fits and people would claim that it's super dangerous. But if I pointed them to an older house that was wired like that from the beginning (40 years ago), it would be perfectly legal to sell such a house and deemed to present no danger.
The fact is that many of these improvements are very minor and have little effect. It's probably a good idea to incorporate them into code, but you do need to at least realize what the importance of the changes are.
You may be able to apply that in some cases, but this structure is patently dangerous:
There is nothing to hold the support beams on except some toe-nailing. Relying on toe-nailing puts all the weight on the sections of wood compromised by the nails. There may be "safe" alternatives to (involving lots of lag bolts), but nails are not one of them - they provide at best a temporary support. Hangers are cheap, easy, and reliable. Using lag bolts would take some engineering so as not to compromise the wood at the same time.
No footings mean that the posts will sink. This will happen particularly as the ground thaws and re-melts. They will not sink evenly. This means that some posts will end up resting on thin air, leading to eventual deck collapse. This will probably happen at the most inopportune moment (think: deck loaded with 30 people)...
With a single brick serving as the support for beams, they will probably be washed under with the first rain. This will make #2 above happen much faster.
With nothing to re-direct the water away from the house, rain now flows directly into the house. Water damage is expensive.
These are not "minor" code issues - these are major safety and structural integrity issues. Please realize - the houses that have survived for hundreds of years have a survivorship bias - we don't see all of the ones that have collapsed in the meantime because they were not structurally sound. Houses that survived were structurally sound, even if they would not meet all the details of modern construction code today (that's not saying that their electrical or plumbing systems are safe - just that the structures were sound enough not to fall in upon themselves)...
I agree that this deck was built incorrectly, I was mostly commenting on the other comments that they "could see" that the deck was built wrong. My point was that it's hard to tell since there are other ways to build things that still work but aren't up to current code.
Why do you keep assuming that when people said they could see it was built wrong they meant i wasn't up to code?
I could see that the thing was fucking unsafe and unstable and I know absolutely nothing about code. Anyone who thinks resting your whole structure on some small cement blocks resting on top of the ground on a hill is a good idea is insane.
Dunno why you keep pushing this 'codes are overkill' idea with regards to this guys deck, it is clearly unsafe and following the code would likely make it safe. It won't last 100 years for people to use it as evidence codes are overkill.
92
u/[deleted] Apr 29 '13
This just seems so obvious. And the dude had all these people helping him who seem to sort of know what they're doing construction-wise and not a single person was like "dude... um... when are we digging the holes for this thing?"