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.
-------------------------------------------------------------- "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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