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After building the upper deck, the previous owner added—as an afterthought—a study with ample windows and skylights that made it a very pleasant place to work in. We wanted to keep the study, which posed a major problem: It was sitting right on the deck with practically no change in elevation. But if the outside deck was to become a real roof, it needed a pitch, which could only be accomplished by making the structure supporting the deck lower than the elevation of the study.

I planned to put structural support underneath the study that was independent of the deck so that I could cut away afterwards everything that was sticking out and rebuild the deck from scratch in an L-shape around the study at a lower elevation. I needed to consult with a structural engineer to devise a structurally sound scheme that could also be build with common tools, i.e. one that did not involve steel members. We used two triple LVL beams of considerable depth to do this, as the section shows: One spanning the entire length of the garage from front to back to support the left wall of the study, and one forming a lintel over the garage doors to support one end of the first beam (the other end could safely rest on the back wall of the garage).

crawlspace plan


Last change made to this page: November 11, 2007

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