How to attach larger ledger board to smaller house joist

by Brad
(Sterling, VA)


I've attached an image to this posting that may help show the problem I'm about to describe. (Note: the sketch is not to scale)

So I started removing the vinyl siding from my house today to install the ledger board for a new deck we are building. All the joists, beams and ledgers for the deck are 2x12 PT lumber.

The existing house joists are only 2x10. This wouldn't be a major problem except for the fact that I have to account for a 3" step down (we get lots of snow) and then another 1" for the 5/4 decking.

Taking into account these 4" from the top of the house joist that only leaves about 6" to attach a 12" ledger board. In addition, code in my county requires the top lag screws to be 2" from the top of the ledger board. So that means I'm now putting the top row of screws 4" above the bottom of the floor joist which essentially gives me nothing to attach the bottom lag screws into.

I'm trying to figure out what the best way is to attach the ledger to the house in this situation.

FYI: Local building code PDF available here (its only 3 pages)

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Jan 20, 2019
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by: Anonymous

This is Brad (the original poster). Thanks for the feedback. We actually went back and re-examined the project. We had over-engineered it and decided to drop down to either 2x10's or 2x8's (it was a few years ago and I forget exactly what we did and we have since moved). By using the narrower ledger we were able to get all of the lags into the band board.
Jan 20, 2019
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by: Jimm

Your diagram shows house studs below the band board. can't the lower row of lags simply be drilled and screwed into these studs? Code requires every 16", but that is likely the distance between the studs as well.
Apr 15, 2018
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by: Merv

I was wondering if you found a solution to use 2x12 ledger without having a big enough band board to go to?

Editor's Comments


There are some creative ways to try and deal with this. Once work around that seems to be quite strong and robust is this concept of using a custom L bracket that is secured to the foundation.

Ledger Connection Adaptation To Concrete Foundation


Ledger Connection adaptation

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