Does anyone know of a span chart for glue lam beams?
I want to build a deck 11ft x 19ft - total of 209 sqft
suppored by a ledger at the building and a glue lam 11 ft out from the building, Spaning 19ft post to post. The weight would be people, the joist would be 2x8 (16 oc), and 2x6 for decking.
I searched online, I can find sites where you need to be an engineer to make sense of them, but not where they tell me the beam span.
Dcurt
If you call the place where you will buy the glu lam, they will usually have tables that will allow them to spec what size you want.
I’m not even going to give you my educated guess, you take a lawyers advice and it doesn’t work out you might get a bigger ticket, I give you the wrong info here and you plunge (along with all your litigious friends) to horrible disfigurement or death!
Really, get an expert to spec it, what you are saving in doing it yourself will more than cover anything you have to pay a structural engineer but like I said most supply houses have in house estimators who can do it for you.
You can’t span 19 feet between supports like that most likely, espescially outside. Most glue lams aren’t even made for outdoor usage. According to my stepdad, a carpenter by trade. Maybe your lumberyard will tell you otherwise.
We’ve run glue-lam headers of over 16 feet, but there aren’t people standing on them all day long either. 2x8 joists will only give you a ten foot span, but if you put your beam 9 feet out you can hang them two feet off of the end of it. 2x6 decking is unnecessary, you can use 5/4 x 6 decking on 16 inch centers. its rated to 24 inch centers, but i’ve heard tell that that gets spongy. 2x6 I THINK is rated to 32 inch centers. Some guys do like to use 2x6 for their decking, it makes it infinetly stiffer, but 5/4 is stiff enough for the money if you want my two cents. (my 2 years experience two cents, i’ll add)
as to your beam, a doubled up 2x12 is what we usually use, you have 8 feet between posts there. i THINK you can do the same with a doubled up 2x10 beam. Is there an issue where you can’t or don’t want posts at your beam line? you could run your joists parallel to the house, between two freestanding beams, with 2 x 12 joists you have 14 feet, and two feet cantilevered on the other end brings you to 18 feet, you could cheat 6 inches on your span and 6 on your cantilever for your 19 feet, or you could put them on 12 inch centers for a longer span (though i don’t know what that length is). Something like that might be a great time for 2 x 6 decking. How high off the ground is this?
To Mike the lumberyard wants me to tell them the size so they won’t be sued.
To Johnnyv yes I need the clear span. The deck would be about 7 ft high and the 2x6 just seems like a better look and feel.
You might consider using steel, either a truss or an I-beam, to carry your edge span.
I agree with you about the 2x6 decking vs. the 5/4 – better look and feel. Also, last time I bought any CCA, the 2x6’s were actually a bit cheaper than the 5/4.
You’d need a 5 and one half inch by 20 inch glue lam to span 19 feet according to my boss, or a 12 inch steel I beam, and the I- Beam would be cheaper and give you less bounce. either way, be sure to seal whatever you use well, because they don’t make pressure treated glue-lam anymore. also, he noted that on 12 inch centers 2x12s have 17 feet 4 inches when used as joists.
As an afterthought, I don’t think the typical regulation 8 -10 inch diameter by 36 inch deep hole with 8 inches of concrete is enough for your post on something like that.
That’s depressing that the lumberyard doesn’t have the span charts for you. All the manufacturers provide them readily to contractors/builders, they just don’t seem to have them on their websites (if they even have websites). They’re so available that we even had them in high school for our architecture class.