A Cantilevered Supported Deck

by AJ
(State College, PA)

I want to design a deck that will have its only support come from the wall (cantilevered) that its attached to.

Because of our back yard there is no feasible way to have ground support posts. Would a simple truss design support, similar to a bridge suffice? Its not a big deck, only 10' out and 20' along the house.

What kind of attachments should I look into? We live in central PA and the winters are sometimes rough.

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Oct 18, 2009
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starstarstarstar 		Cantilever For Existing Deck
by: Editor - Rich Bergman

There are a few principles you should start with as you consider this project. First of all the code says a lot about how joist framing should be configured for cantilevered floors - or decks in this case.

Don't take my word for it because it depends on your code for your area but my engineer recently drew up some plans for a new house I am building and it had a cantilevered section.

We had to run joists perpendicular to the rest of the joist directions in the floor and the joists had to be twice as long as the area that was cantilevered. But consider this a minimum. You may have to go back three times as far as the cantilevered portion. Check with the building department in your town or grab a copy of your applicable building code.

That's all for cantilevers.

Now you can also do some decorative truss work if you like that could provide support for your deck. But from what you are describing I think you need an engineer to tell you the loads and moments of force you are dealing with.

Then you might want to get an architect to add some appearance value to any kind of truss support you go with otherwise it might look a bit too utilitarian.

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