Building a porch?

[Geo]

I am considering putting a front porch on my house, It would be a failry straight forward design so I wouldn't expect any surprises for that perspective. However, the house is brick and I'm curious as to whenther it's a bad idea to anchor ledger boards in to brick siding. All the porches that I have ever seen attach directly to the wooden structure of the house with brick put on after the fact. I'm just concerned about the proch structure pulling away from the house (for what ever reason) and pulling the brinck right along with it.

[Chris Perdue]

check your local building codes...bets are that you will be required to drill all the way through the brick to anchor into wood(band)....

------------------- Chris Perdue

*All opinions are those of the author of this post* "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug" reply take your PANTS off

[Tom Baker]

There are both structural and water management issues to be solved.

I recently worked with a 50 year old house with porches framed through brick veneer and attached to the wood framing. The wood porch framing had rotted within the cavity between wood frame and brick veneer. The loss of connection between porch roof frame and house frame left the brick veneer to support the roof loads. The veneer cracked under the additional load.

I didn't have to solve that problem, so I can't speak from actual experience. I suggested two possible ways of dealing with the problem:

Build an independent structure - with the problems of weather tightness at the wall of the existing building.

Removing areas of veneer to connect porch frame to house frame - with the problems of flashing above the frame and allowing for movement between veneer and frame.

Tom Baker