The front wall of our late 70’s bungalow is partially set in to create a narrow porch. The roof is standard trusses all the way across so there is a beam and posts under the truss ends where the wall is not there to support them. The bottoms of the posts are nailed to the concrete walkway with a pair of concrete nails (rusted off) and the bottoms are rotten enough that the posts are just floating now.
I'm pretty sure these posts should be structural, but everything about their construction says decorative:
1. They were obviously installed after the flashing was put on the beam.
2. Their only support is the walkway; there is no foundation underneath to get below frost (I chipped a hole through to check, we are replacing the walkway)
3. Looking at lintel tables in the building code, the double 2x10 beam is much too light for the 13'4" span between the centre two posts. We are located a couple hours west of Toronto, so lots of snow.
I will have a structural engineer involved to come up with the best repair method, but was construction really this shoddy back then? Was there no inspections at all?
EDIT: See below for the pictures, thanks IRstuff for pointing that out!
I'm pretty sure these posts should be structural, but everything about their construction says decorative:
1. They were obviously installed after the flashing was put on the beam.
2. Their only support is the walkway; there is no foundation underneath to get below frost (I chipped a hole through to check, we are replacing the walkway)
3. Looking at lintel tables in the building code, the double 2x10 beam is much too light for the 13'4" span between the centre two posts. We are located a couple hours west of Toronto, so lots of snow.
I will have a structural engineer involved to come up with the best repair method, but was construction really this shoddy back then? Was there no inspections at all?
EDIT: See below for the pictures, thanks IRstuff for pointing that out!
