"Smitty Two" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

"aemeijers" wrote in message
news
On 6/27/2011 2:58 PM, newbee wrote:
We are considering putting a deck on our 20 foot wide town home.
The
back of the home has a 2 car garage and a driveway and the deck will
be directly above the driveway.

Are there any special considerations while putting a deck of this
nature? Do you recommend more than 2 wood beams to hold the deck?

Thanks

SR

If it is attached townhouses, you likely have an HOA and/or CCRs on
the
deed and/or local code that dictate what you can build, especially if
the front yard isn't very deep. Check those out before you spend any
money.

Aside from the fact that I believe it's a backyard deck, it's good
advice.
Add-on decks are frequent subjects of news articles like "Deck collapses
injuring 20" because they are often built ad-hoc by people who are not
quite
up to the engineering part of the task.

--
Bobby G.

Of course, the stories on TV's "Engineering Disasters" were not about
backyard engineers. Plenty of stuff built by credentialed people falls
down.

Yeah, but . . . homemade decks are often built by people who didn't just
guess wrong about loading factors or stress vectors. They just didn't even
know about that stuff and threw some lumber against the wall. Hell, some of
them don't even know about triangular bracing and their decks collapse like
a scissor jack with stripped lift screw.

Back in the days when I was a police reporter three things happened like
clockwork in the hot summer months. Toddlers drowned in swimming pools,
babies and dogs died in locked up in cars and homebrew decks collapsed. I
guarantee they'll be one coming up this Fourth of July. Drunk people
overload the deck and can't hear the squeaking as nails pull out just before
the crash.

The collapsed decks I've seen were pretty much "gee, I wonder why it took so
long for this inadequately braced and nailed together POS to fall?"
Everybody knows someone with a deck like that. It's the American way. (-:
DIY, even if you don't know exactly what you are doing.

And yes, PE's make bad mistakes too. My dad was one of many that helped
investigate the infamous Hyatt Regency walkway collapse. The structure,
though a series of communication mistakes, was barely sufficient to support
its own weight, let alone that of spectators. Over 100 people died.

--
Bobby G.