You’re not showing the whole pic, are you hiding something?
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What picture do you want?
Bob, was that ever clairified with the county as to what they mean.
Footing are usually below frost levels in the ground and a pier is what holds up the column. So a sonotube would be more or less a pier supporting those posts. 18" diameter pier is outrageous and over kill for a deck support.
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If you look at the rest of the document, both circular and square footings are allowed. I don’t see why you can’t just do a 16" x 16" x 10" square footing, run a 12 inch sonotube as a pier to above grade, then attach the 6x6 posts with post base hardware.
I think running the 18" diameter sono-tube as a pier+footing combo is for ease of construction.
The county is not ever clear what they mean. I am less concerned about the posts than the ledger attachment. County inspections would have occurred for the footings and ledger separately before any other work was done. None of the inspections happened though as revealed by my phone call with county permits.
You could certainly do all that, but if you’re cutting corners that is a whole lot of work and requires a lot more digging. In fact just setting a 18" round or 16" square footing at 30 inches requires disturbing a lot more dirt than was done.
The reason they call that sonotube a footing and require it to be 18" round is because it does not have a footing under it. So they mislable it and tell you yo use 18" round for a size. They nee that size for proper bearing. People don’t want to spend the money for proper footings.
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That’s true and the 12" tube does not have the proper bearing surface. That, however, is not as big a problem as the concrete expansion anchors in brick.
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Looking at your bolt pic, it looks like they used a threaded rod and epoxy? not that it is any better. I’m just nitpicking.
Where was this? That’s a lead expandsion sheild used with lag bolts, I have’t used those in 50 years.
There were a number of those in abandoned holes in the rear brick under the deck. Oddly they were in a vertical pattern. I don’t know what might have been there; an attached shed perhaps?
More likely:
The ceiling was finished in the basement by the rear wall and undisturbed. Little chance that bolts went all the way through, and typically only the heads would be exposed.
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