JLC Online: In pre-COVID times, one of my largest and most challenging projects was a 2,500-square-foot deck and matching dock system, part of an extensive outdoor living project for a home on Lake Tapps, in Washington. For the deck’s multiple levels across the home’s lakeside elevation, one of the organizing design elements is a pair of stacked, semi-circular balcony-style projections extending from the home’s central turret.
5 comments:
This is a very cool construction project! It is for sure an example of how a steel beam does the structural job way more efficiently than a wooden beam. The structure for this deck looks very hefty – as they should be, a lot of load is put on these decks, and there is a lot of undetermined dynamic load anticipated on residential structures. Plus the double layer of plywood and the waterproofing layers add significant weight to the structure. The method the author used to maneuver the girder up to the deck without a crane feels like a very theatre load in thing to do. We often tip things over part way up to a higher level and then lever them up onto the structure – just the other day that’s how we moved some ladders on and off the scaffolding for hair. While I know its not a pretty thing to show, I wish there was a picture of this man and his crew in genies levering the girdle up onto the deck. One bone I have to pick with this article is that it is not a cantilever deck if there’s a girdle in it. It is pretty obvious that these decks are not cantilevered from all the columns shown in the article photos.
First of all, I want to say that this house is massive and really pretty. It’s also very impressive that this project was done by only two people. It was very interesting to read about how this author was able to solve the problem of the third story deck. What I found the most intriguing was the way that this man was able to get the steel girder up to the level it needed to be without a crane on sight. I have to say that it was a bit difficult for me to picture in my head the exact way that the girder was lifted by the way it was described in the article, and I do wish there were more photos added to clearly explain the process, but what I could understand was pretty cool. In theatre, we don’t often have cranes to assist us in our heavy lifting, so the way that the author problem solved with the lifts seemed pretty similar to the way we do things in the theatre industry.
Well that just put every dad’s summer deck project to shame. Wow that was really something else. I mean there was a lot of engineering that needed to go into that sort of deck structure off of someone’s house. I can only imagine what the rest of the structure needed. The process of adding the beam and working to get that structure the desired aesthetic is really interesting and cool to think about. As Katie said the process for which they installed the beam really sounds like something we would try to do in a theatrical setting. Honestly I only wish this article had gone into a little more depth. I really would like to know more about what kind of drainage system they used and how they integrated it into the decking, especially around the steel portions of the deck. With the seating they put down for nailing down the decking boards I imagine the flow over the continuous membrane is different than the rest of the deck and it is probably more susceptible to pooling or puddling up in that area.
What an interesting project! It is always interesting to me when typical issues our industry runs into with technical design intersects with issues in much larger construction projects. My family runs a small engineering consultation firm, and this reminds me of a lakeside property in Chicago that I worked on as a detailer. Most home construction in the U.S. relies on lumber for structural members, though more engineered products like LVL and gluelam boards are seeping in to the market. As such, the use of steel here for structural support is especially noteworthy, and definitely the right choice. Given that deck framing is particularly hefty, I would be interested in seeing if a fully steel supported structure may have been a more efficient choice here, even though that may have made integrating other parts of the structure (like the ceiling and the floor for each level) more difficult. Reading about how they used ingenuity to get the girder in to place since they did not have access to a crane was also interesting.
I appreciate this article for the insights that it gives into unusual construction out in the real world, but it also reminds me about how much cooler the stuff we do in theatre construction is compared to more general contracting. Curved decking is something we encounter all the time, and while this was certainly no easy task I think it goes to show how much we shouldn't take our work for granted. You'll often hear the 'little e' vs 'big E' engineering as a way to distinguish our work from this type of work, but I don't think it should diminish the level of thinking that we have to put into our own projects. Curved decking is something we deal with regularly, but in the real world it is article-worthy. I also like that they noted that the installation was akin to building the pyramids, when the reality is genie towers are used all over the place in theatres for this exact application. My point to all of this is that we should give ourselves credit for the work that we do. While it may not be "BIG E ENGINEERING", its still really amazing and cool!
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