Deck Knee Brace

[dgengineering]

Hello everyone,

I am designing a deck with knee braces. It's designed as a separate structure so there is a gap between the existing house and the deck. Because of this gap knee brace has to be connected to the blocking between deck joists, not to a beam. Please see my sketch to visualize this better.
My question is how to connect blockings to the joists? I don't think we can use toe nails. It has to be either inverted hangers or some other method. I need your advice on this please.

Thank you

 

[dgengineering]

I will use H2.5 clips both sides. I think that will work

 

[XR250]

Have you actually calculated the demand in the braces? Use 20% of the deck live load as lateral and see what you get. You may think differently about it.

 

[JAE]

I would be inclined to double up on the blocking (make it thicker) and strap the entire length of the blocking all across the deck - this ties the line of blocking together both for compression and tension where it can act as a proper collector. Then lap the knee braces onto the side of the blocking (not the bottom).

 

[lexpatrie]

Never mind the capacity, the H2.5 clips don't feel like they are right for a knee brace anyway. Those are tested for rafters to top plates.

Knee braces aren't fantastic at cutting down the effective length of a column, but most decks the column isn't really controlling anyway, so you want it there for basic stability not to increase the capacity of the post/column (see Steel Design After College on knee braces if you're into K factor discussions).

 

[skeletron]

I would be inclined to double up on the blocking (make it thicker) and strap the entire length of the blocking all across the deck - this ties the line of blocking together both for compression and tension where it can act as a proper collector. Then lap the knee braces onto the side of the blocking (not the bottom).

Yep. I second trying to make the connection to the face of the blocking rather than screwing up into it.