Mixing Concrete Question

[WVBill]

Ahh - "Northern Virginia" - Fairfax County by any chance? I dealt with them when I built a deck on my house there several years ago. You truly have no option other than the 24X24X24 hole. I spent many hours laying on my stomach reaching into the hole with a 2lb sledge and a cold chisel trying to chip out rock ledge to get the last 4" of depth. Finally had to give in and hire a guy with an industrual jack hammer for a day. Once that was done, I just set the 6x6 on top of the 8" pad but I would think you could still use your proposed construction approach as follows...

Go ahead with the required holes and get them inspected. Pour 8" of concrete in the bottom of each (embed several re-bar sticking up out of each pad) and get them inspected. Then put a 12" sonotube (round concrete form) on the concrete pads and surrounding the re-bar and back-fill the holes around the sonotube. Build your deck with the temporary supports as you've proposed and fill the sonotubes with concrete to the required level. You will still need a bolt and metal tie plates on the top of the concrete pillar that the sonotube forms in order to tie your deck structure to the concrete. With this method you could even skip the 6x6's by just tying your deck support joists directly to the concrete pillars.

I won't guarantee it but it might fly...

Shortly after I built the deck I moved out here to Jefferson County WV and until last summer, there were no local codes/inspections/inspectors. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[marrt]

I'm in Loudoun next door. I will ask about the Sonotubes. I remember seeing some landscaping timbers at my Father-in-Laws that had rotted to dust in less than 7 years. Although I buried the posts in my last deck as per code, I'd like to use sonotubes this time.

 

[RonL]

Might want to take a look at the "Bigfoot" concrete footers and see if they would fit in to your plans. They're made of recycled plastic and look like an inverted funnel. Sonotube is attached. The whole thing is centered in your excavated hole(over rebar if needed) and backfilled. In one pour you make your footing and column.

RonL