You didn't say where you live, But here in MN, that 36" footing wouldn't be
to code.

I'd say the first thing to find out is why that footing sank so much?? It's
hard to say if your footing is actually done settling, so if you lift the
deck and put in a longer 4x4, who's to say this won't settle too? I'm kind
of anal about things, but I'd find out what your local codes say about the
depth, then perhaps dig a new footing directly next to that one and re-pour.

Just my two cents

Whatever you do, you don't need to remove the decking/beam to do the work.
And you probably don't have to bother with the plastic, unless you're having
runoff and leakage problems as well?

Tim

wrote in message
ups.com...
Here's the situation. Five feet away from the house I have a beam made
of two 2x10's held up by 4x4's resting on concrete which is 36 inches
deep.

Ten feet out there's a second beam -- just what the local building code
asked for -- well they asked for the first to be no less than 6 feet
from the house and the second no less than 12.

The joists rests on these two beams -- or that was the intention. One
end of the joists are attached to the house, the other ende overhange
the outer bean by about 20 inches.

Anyway, apparently the soil 5 feet from the house had not settled very
well because in the last 6 years since the house and deck were built,
the concrete caisons for the first beam have sunk about 5 to 8 inches.
At first I kept putting shims in to keep it in contact with the joists
but not that is increasingly difficult since there's now enough spring
in the deck that the shims work there way loose and out.

So I plan to remove the decking, remove the beam. pout more concrete
over the exitsing concrete. then rebuild the beam underneath, then
putblack plastic down to let the rain/snow water drain off and then put
the decking back.

Is this the best thing to do?

Or should I build a whole new beam six feet out from the house -- will
that 1 exter foot make a lot of difference?


Thanks in advance.


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"There's 3 types of people in the world: those that can count and those
that can't." Tom Mullis, EE Professor at Univ of Colorado, Boulder.

"There's two types of peple in the world: those that believe there's
two types of people in the world and those that don't." -- Don't recall
who said this.
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