free-standing ain't free

I'm sure there are other decisions you should make first. Location. Cost... Whether you want to just hire a contractor and stop reading blogs...

For me, it was ledger-boards. Never liked them. From the moment I started my backyard deck project, I'd always envisioned it as a free-standing deck, even though it will be next to my house.

Here's the pros and cons of a ledger-board as I see them:
Cons
  1. Caused almost every deck failure I've seen
  2. Could add lateral force to your house in an earthquake
  3. Could compromise the water seal of your house
Pros:
  1. Provides stability to your deck
  2. Saves money on posts
  3. Makes it easy to level your deck
For me, I could have stopped the list at the first bullet point. Over 90% of deck failures can be directly attributed to the ledger board. That's reason enough to consider free-standing. Yes, the problem can be mitigated by hardware. However, if you have a problem, how would you know?


Image an story from MyFoxAtlanta.  Just search deck collapse on google.  You won't find many that don't look at lot like this.

Our house contributes to the second con as well. It's a post and beam box from 1948. It hasn't has a seismic retrofit (yet) so it needs all the work Simpson describes here Seismic Retrofit Guide. That will happen eventually, and add a lot of strength to the house. Even then, I'm not sure I want to find out what a few thousand pounds of deck feels like adding lateral force to my house in an Earthquake.

So, that means I lose all the pros. More diagonal reinforcement will be required. Another row of post, costing hundreds more. And I need to level the deck without a nice straight ledger to guide me. So be it, I'm going free-standing.