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Pookie129
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# Posted: 10 Aug 2014 01:37am
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I apologize in advance for my limited knowledge on general construction and hope you will be patient as I try to ask and explain my question.
We are having some general construction done at our home and we have hired people to do the work as we are not very handy. Plus some of the work is serious stuff and I know enough to know when to call in professionals (or so I thought).
My question is as follows - We have an upper balcony off an office on the upper floor. Under the balcony is a nook (open area). The joist under the balcony at the outer corner started to rot (well before we bought the house - it was wired off with chicken wire or something and bolted to the eaves and upper balcony. The support beam just sort of rested below the rotted out section. Blah blah blah. Long story short - I wanted them to pull back everything to see if there was further damage rather than just replace part of the joist and do it cheaply or poorly as we stand on that balcony and if we ever sold it, I would hate to have something bad happen. They pulled it back, no further damage and it looked very dry and good. However, the lattice and privacy fencing below that extends to the nook was water damaged and needed replacing.
It was decide to remove the entire railing as well as lattice and just replace it was 3 support beams and privacy lattice between them - looks better than it sounds.
Now to my question - when I got home the other day, only one of the support beams supported the joist - the other 2 support beams ran along side of the joist and up and under the balcony and rested on the roof of the nook under the balcony and missed the joist completely and they were just going to close the ceiling/roof of the nook in "but with nice cedar". I am missing something here, shouldn't all the support beams go under the joist and be attached via a t bar or whatever the hell the metal braces/brackets are called - thusly supporting the joists which are supporting the balcony.
They seemed to say that they were trying to make it stronger, but okay if we want it the other way - Am I missing something? Is that possible with the beam just resting along side the joist and not attached to anything at the top?
I am confused and I missed the last meeting (when they explained that it was stronger this way but will change it) as my partner was there (I was traveling for work)...
Any help or suggestions or feedback would be appreciated.
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Don_P
Member
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# Posted: 10 Aug 2014 08:32am
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Can't make heads or tails of that. It needs pictures and probably a dimensioned sketch of everything involved. Start with an overall long shot to orient the viewer then closer pictures to show the details you are trying to describe. However, the best way to do this is to call in an engineer and have them review what has been done or design a better repair.
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ThomD
Member
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# Posted: 25 Aug 2014 01:55am
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Pictures would help, but baring that you might look here:
http://www.nachi.org/articles.htm
There are good articles on inspecting decks, that might help you with your balcony issues. Lots of pictures of details and common failings.
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toyota_mdt_tech
Member
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# Posted: 25 Aug 2014 02:02pm
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Pookie129, get some pictures. Tell them to hold off on closing it up till Don_P tells you what you need to do.   
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