On Jun 7, 8:04 pm, wrote:
I am looking to build a deck on the back of my house. The house is on
a hill and has a sliding glass door from the basement to the back
yard. There is also a sliding glass door from the kitchen to where
the deck will be. I am having conflicted ideas of how to go about
designing the deck.

The basement wall is 96" from the ground of the back yard to to top of
teh poured concrete, there is then two 2x4's with a double 2x10 on
top. There as about 12" from the top of the basement sliding glass
door to the top of the poured foundation. There is then about 15"
from the top of the foundation to the bottom of the kitchen sliding
glass door.

I am not sure if i should attach the ledger to the foundation wall or
attach into the double 2x10s of the house.

I would prefer to attach to the foundation and build a stair at the
kitchen door. However when I add the beams at the far end of the
deck, i will only have about 76" of clearance to walk under.

I can raise the deck an extra 12" or so by attaching the ledger to the
2x10s. I have concernes with attaching the deck to this section of
teh house because it does not appear to be a sturdy as the foundation
would be.

Is there any way to attach a ledger to the foundation, but then have
the joists run above the ledger somehow?

Thanks for any help & suggestions.

Patrick

My first question is why you think the double 2x10's would not be
adequate to support the deck ledger. Are they resting on the
foundation? If so, then they would certainly support a deck ledger.
Yes, you can attach a ledger to the foundation and rest the joists on
the foundation. But it is seldom done, at least where I live, in a
non-seismic zone. a single ply 2X is probably inadequate. When I
have done this, the engineer specced 4x12's---and that's some serious
work, bolting a 4x12 ledger to concrete. Then, you should put
blocking between the joists above the ledger. Much easier to hang the
joist off of the ledger with joist hangers IMO.