Floor Load Width Deck

Beam span maximums are based on a maximum anticipated live load.

Floor load width deck.

This video looks at floor load width flw. A typical wood frame floor covered with carpet or vinyl flooring has a dead load of about 8 pounds per square foot. In general terms joists spaced 16 inches on center can span 1 5 times in feet their depth in inches. To correctly calculate the minimum strength and placement of the timber that you should use on your deck you need to first establish the floor load width of your bearers and then the spacing of your posts.

2x10 to 15 feet and 2x12 to 18 feet. Common sense tells you that large floor joists can carry more load and spacing joists closer together also increases the load bearing capacity of a floor. The load that is placed on your deck is expressed in pounds per square foot psf and the total load or more appropriately the design load is comprised of the dead load and the live load. Building codes for residential decks only require 40 psf.

The image and text below is a simple guide to the concept of floor load width. When i was a builder i built residential decks based on a 70 psf design load 60 psf live load plus 10 psf dead load. Fewer posts on upper level decks are typically more desirable to the occupants and this drives the use of larger framing materials for longer spans. This is the fourth video in the series on the timber framing code.

Flute width compatible with all standard concrete anchors composite deck 11 2 inch depth 36 inch coverage 7 foot to 10 foot optimal span range no acustadek option lowest composite deck slab weight per square foot for the specified concrete thickness above the deck. The dead load on a floor is determined by the materials used in the floor s construction. But larger is not always better when builders are constructing a home or adding a room addition. A lot of questions revolve around joists when it comes to building a deck.

How do i keep them even. If there s wall board covered ceiling suspended from the underside of that floor the dead load increases to about 10 pounds per square foot. A 2x8 up to 12 feet. For a 12 foot span beam at the edge of the deck our base case example of 2x10s at 24 inches on center does not meet that standard.

The extra two inches of vertical distance when a floor is framed with 2 x 10 joists rather than 2 x 12s can be quite important for example. The species of lumber size of lumber and the load it carries. How far apart are floor joists placed. These standards are borrowed by deck builders and come from the actual code requirements used for the floor deck of a residential home.