How to Install and Flash a Deck Ledger, Start to Finish

[Music] so we're doing a ledger and the most important part of installing ledger right is making sure that it's long lasting it can support the deck for the duration of the decks life so in order to prevent any problems with water getting into the wall that can rot out the rim joist to the house and cause the whole deck to pull away we're gonna make sure we got a good flashing system and that starts with some peel-and-stick membranes some self adhered membrane that goes against the wall what you see here this gray part down here is indicating a foundation wall and then we've got our wall that we're going to be attaching everything to I've already established my grades for this deck I've already got my footing locations a level line over here some marks that are my top of the ledger board and I've snapped a chalk line above that four to six inches and that's gonna be where I'm gonna put that self adhered membrane against the wall here's a piece of membrane we're going to be putting on the wall it's 18 inches wide and it's gonna bridge from the top of that line down to at least three or four inches below the bottom of the ledger board now I've scored the release paper on the back of the ceiling stick because I want to be able to separate in two separate pieces that way later on when the siding goes on the wall if we're working on upper portion of the house we can tuck the siding underneath that peel-and-stick membrane so water gets shed out so now we're ready to put the membrane on the wall now it's not very warm in the studio here so this isn't going to stick readily to the wall so I'm gonna use a hammer attacker stapler to put it on I got the line here where my ledger is eventually gonna go I want to make sure I'm past that by four to six inches I'll pull that over there stick it to the wall just give it a tack now you just stay a little bit ahead of me and I'm gonna pull the membrane release paper off and if you're not perfect on the line that's fine really we want to just be pretty close so we don't a bunch of wrinkles and now that we got the membrane on the wall we could snap a chalk line and then we can start putting the ledger on so we're going with that bottom line right there got it I'm gonna adjust it to the line I've got over here you're Endel automatically go where it's supposed to let me start first okay now you can just spin them all in just make sure you don't sink them so here we got a mock-up of the model wall that we've been working from and the screws we just put in so we use structural screws for this detail here you can see we got the ledger board we got the wall sheathing await the rim joists to the house now first off when we were planning this I had to make sure that the screws are going to be long enough to go all the way through that sandwich some cases you got a thicker sheathing you might have a space there you're going to need longer screws when the screws penetrate through want to make sure that there at least the tip sticking through they don't have to be through an inch or anything like that just the tip sticking through so in this case we got like three and a half or three and three-quarter inch screws screws come with different head profiles some are flush washer type screw heads others have hex head screw heads in either case what we want to do when we're laying out the screw pattern on the wall or on the ledger board want to make sure that we avoid any joists or the flanges of the hangers that are supporting those joists so we get that layout for the pattern from the screws from the manufacturers installation instructions and based on the span of the joists from the ledger board out to the caring beam based on the load that's going to be on the deck as well as what the rim joist material is that's behind the wall those are all going to play into the spacing we read that right off the table and then we got our spacing let's say in this instance we got seventeen inches apart now obviously if we do our joist at 16 inches apart and our screw spacing at 17 at some point we're gonna end up with a conflict where a screw is going to end up landing either where a joist is or where the flange of a hanger is going to go in that case the manufacturer as well as the code allow us to smooth that one screw off position by up to three inches left or right that way we can avoid a conflict and that's particularly the case when we're using the hex head screws with the washer head type screws they're not going to be such a problem because they're a fairly flat profile and you often the joists they'll be able to clear right over that if we set those flush no matter which ledger attachment system you end up using you're still going to want to continue the continuity of our ledger flashing system with an extra piece of self adhering em brain it's gonna go on top of the ledger so here I've already scored the release sheet on the back about two inches up and that makes it easier to install because I can peel off the bottom piece or the top piece of the release paper separately from the other piece which will make installation less prone to sticking where it doesn't belong so I'm going to overhang this a little bit over the left side by about an inch and I usually just start in the middle now you'll notice I'm working with a fairly short piece and that's because when you're working alone it's just a drag to try to work with long pieces of the sticky stuff I'm better off working with short pieces I'm less likely to make a mistake stick it in the wrong spot and end up with a mess on my hands key thing here when I'm putting this second layer down over the top of the ledger so I want to make sure I'm tight on that inside corner and that way I don't end up with a like a curved part of a bridge in there that could get ruptured when I put the metal flashing on once that's in nice and snug a little bit that goes down the face now this could be a quarter of an inch down it could be three inches down some people put it all the way to the bottom of the ledger board whatever you prefer is fine and I just work my way down in these wing span length pieces with an overlap of you know roughly four inches and if it's a hot day or a sunny day where you're afraid of this stuff getting stuck where you don't want it what I recommend is pre-cut the pieces bring a cooler to the job with you with some ice in it and just stick it in the ice cooler for about thirty minutes before you're going to stick it on the wall that'll chill it down and it won't be as sticky that way if you end up touching it where you don't want it won't bond to the wall and make a mess on you and once it warms up give it an extra press and that'll seal everything in now if you're in an area that doesn't get a lot of rainfall you might be looking at this and thinking man that's overkill but for those of us that live in higher rain zone areas or even if we're not high rain zone area but when we do get rain it comes down in torrents the risk is if you don't do a good flashing job that we end up getting water that back behind the ledger board now of course we pre flashed it with that first piece of peel-and-stick so this in a little bit of a way becomes redundant but I'd really rather get this water to flow out over the top of the ledger than relying on my insurance policy that we have down underneath now the two ends I'm just going to make a little bit of a relief cut diagonally out from the corner about a quarter of an inch out from where the end of the ledger is most of these plastic surface membranes will stretch just a little bit and gives us a little extra protection right there then I can wrap around the corner go back and do the other end just to recap a little bit on this just to point out a couple different benefits of doing the system this way if this is my foundation down below here and I'm putting the membrane on over the foundation I'm gonna want to cover this up even if this is a low deck to the ground you know this in sunlight is not going to get to it I'd still rather cover it up just to keep any critters from getting back there and messing with it or if it's up high enough where you could see it then you're definitely gonna want to trim board so that could be a one by something that's just gonna fasten on the lower part of the building where you still have some wood and that way it covers over the foundation and it also covers over the piece of self-adhering now if this was a deck that was up say second-story on a house this becomes extra valuable because as you're bringing your cladding up if it's any type of lap siding this could be vinyl siding it could be wood clapboard it could be any sort of engineer type of siding the next-to-the-last course when you install that nail it in place but make sure you tuck it underneath the peel and stick the reason why I've left that release paper on there was so that I could lift this up so now I can lift this up tuck that clapboard under there then I can put the final piece of clapboard on that way any water that does get back there gets drained out onto the surface of that peel-and-stick material doesn't get kicked out on top of the house wrap up of both here it's going to end up getting kicked out on top of the surface of the siding and that way it's traveling in an area that's a lot more safe than behind this up now at the end over here the benefit of leaving this one piece that we backed up our ledger board with extra an extra four or five inches long is because that's a vulnerable spot in any detail where you've got a butt joint between the siding and the ledger board if I just had house wrap back there yeah hopefully the house wrap would be free of holes and the water would get back there and then it would drain down behind the house wrap without doing any harm well by having that peeling stick or a little longer now when I tuck this piece of siding underneath and I got that butt joint there if any water gets in that butt joint now it gets kicked out onto the top of that siding or it can do no harm face of the wall don't worry about putting another piece of clapboard or siding over the top that you're gonna trap water back there if you're worried about that just take a couple of toothpicks slip those underneath that'll leave enough space for weeping of the water between those laps now eventually what you'll see is we'll put a metal flashing over the top of this we can't leave these feel and stick materials on the wall exposed to daylight and one of the things most contractors don't realize is that once we put our final piece of deck board on the siding that goes above that you need to have a certain distance between the siding and the finished piece of decking that could be a half inch it could be up to two inches depending on the branded type of siding so by having that metal flashing not only is it a good deflector of all the water it can also be color matched so that you don't view a strip of the peel-and-stick which can't be exposed to UV light and it also provides some protection for the material that's underneath that way you've got double protection you got the primary metal flashing if that gets damaged we have the peel and stick material which will catch any of the water that gets through our primary flashing drain that over the face and if any water gets through that we got that backup sheet so triple protected now that I got my joist hangers in place I'm gonna put the cap flashing on top and the reason I'm doing it now is because the joists are going to be coming in if I waited till after the joists were in I'd have a hard time getting this drop leg in the front that goes over the front of the ledger behind those joists so I'm dropping it in now now that that's finished once I put the fasteners on we'll be bringing our water resistant barrier over the top of that leaving our appropriate clearance space above the top of the decking to the bottom of the cladding and then once the cladding goes on we've got a waterproof ledger installation you [Music]

Channel: finehomebuilding

Views: 812,222

Keywords: Shop Class, FineHomebuilding.com, Critical Deck Connections, deck framing, decks, deck building, remodeling, ledger, deck hardware

Id: A8MJrFiXHcQ

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019