Installing Notched Wood Posts to Concrete Patio

[bschweit]

I have purchased the Rail Simple railing kits for my patio. They did not come with posts, so I went to Lowes and purchased some notched 4x4's ready to be installed. My plan was to use 3 or 4 Tapcon concrete screws to mount these posts to the side of my patio. Is this enough to hold them, or should I use concrete anchors? Check out the picture of my patio for reference.

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks,

Barry

[Marc]

The tapcons should resist outward forces at the floor level just fine but don't depend on them to resist the force of someone leaning against the top rail. The corner posts and the rail terminations at the wall of the house are your strong points. The top rail of your chosen rail system should be strong enough to transmit leaning forces to those strong points rather than act upon the tapcon screws.

Marc

[Ben H]

If it were mine, I'd use these. http://www.itw-redhead.com/dynabolt_prod01.asp

But depending on the age/condition of the concrete, they may not hold either. If it was poorly mixed, you'll might crack it with enough force against the post at the top. After all, concrete has great compression strength, but crappy tensile.

[bschweit]

The patio is 12x12 and the railing kits I purchased are 6' sections, so I'll have posts every 6 feet. I'm leaning towards fastening the first rail off the house directly to the brick, then there will be one post in between the house and the corner.

I figured using the Tapcons would hold it well enough, but will the anchors give me any more protection from the force of someone leaning on the rails, or would I only get that by anchoring the post to the bottom of the patio instead of the side?

[Tom Raymond]

Your notched 4x4 posts can't meet the code requirement when through bolted to a wood deck frame, a couple of tapcons into concrete aren't going to work. You need a post system designed to be fastened to concrete. Check out step 4 in the Certainteed rail instructions here:http://www.certainteed.com/resources/oxfordinstallation.pdf then contact support at Rail Simple and see if they have something similar.

What you plan to do is going to seriously injure someone.

[bschweit]

I was checking out my neighbor's deck which he had done last summer, and it looks like the deck builder wrapped his concrete patio with 2x6's bolted to the concrete and them mounted the deck to that. To me, that does not seem to be any more structurally sound that what I was attepting to do.

Sounds like my only solution is to find a solid way to mount the posts to the floor of the patio instead of the side. So notched posts are NOT the way to go. I've seen a few products out there, some that are quite a bit pricey ($16/post) for a "hidden" way of doing it where the post needs to be drilled out from underneath and then slid onto what is attached to the concrete floor. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to use to provide the cleanest looking solution. I just don't want to see those big bulky anchors that wrap around the bottom of the 4x4.

Thanks everyone!

Barry

[hausdok]

Here's an idea; why don't you ask the folks that frequent Professional Deck Builder Mag's forums?

http://www.deckmagazine.com/forums/index.php

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[bschweit]

Here is my discussion from the Deck Builder's forum, in case anyone is interested. To summarize, I decided on going with the Titan Anchor system for each post, securing them with wedge bolts at each of the 8 points.

Deck Builder's Forum