|
 So my new support is a little ghetto looking, but it
works. I recycled parts I had removed from other projects,
then attached everything together with deck anchors.
Like I said, the sag is still there, but hopefully it won't
continue at the rate at which it was sagging before. Now I
have some confidence that my rails won't sag so
badly.
I put a similar ghetto contraption under the beam you see
above. I first straightened it, (a couple of ghetto kicks took
care of that), then jacked it up to the new joist height. Once
the beam reconnected with the joists, I anchored all of
them to the beam. Now when you walk across the deck, it
doesn't feel like a moon bounce.
This project is coming up on a year. Something tells
me it will reach the mark pretty
easily. | 
My Dad cutting the notches in the posts to fit on
the rim joist.
Before I can put up the railings, I had to deal with
another issue. If you look close, you can see a sag in the
middle of the planks. In addition to the sag, the whole thing
felt like a trampoline when walking across
it.
There was a large expanse underneath that didn't
have any kind of support, hence the sag. I jacked it up to put
a new support underneath the middle of it. Unfortunately I
couldn't remove the sag, as it had permanently deformed the
boards to that shape, but I could keep it from getting
worse.
You can see even the beam that was there was bent
and twisted. The trampoline effect was caused by the lack of
connection between the joists and the supporting beam. When I
jacked things up, the joists easily floated above the existing
support beam.