Discovered a surprise concrete structure underground where I need a deck post footing to go. How to work around this?

I am underway on a decent sized DIY deck project. This is a big project for me, both in effort and in cost (I'm springing for a composite deck), and I've done a lot of research to make it up to codes (although this particular structure is not subject to codes requirements / inspections in my area).

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I'm digging post footing holes by hand, depth 36 inches. After days of digging, on the fourth and final one, I hit a flat concrete surface about 2 feet down. Upon further excavation, I'm fairly certain that it's the top of an old septic tank. I have city sewer not septic, and all utilities connections are on the other side of the house, so I was not expecting this.

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Now I'm left with a bit of a problem, as the location of my corner load-bearing post falls right in the middle of what's essentially a thin hollow concrete box. To redesign such that the footing fell elsewhere would require major changes, and I already have the ledger attached to the house and every last bit of material purchased and on site for the deck size I chose. Not to mention filling in and re-digging the holes elsewhere, which already took me days.

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I've toyed with the idea of finding a way to reinforce the surface to pour the concrete footings where I intended to - such as laying galvanized or stainless I- or T-beams down across the lid and then pouring the concrete footing over that, thus transferring the load off of the lid of the tank, and onto the vertical walls of the thing. This sounds pretty out-there, but I'm trying to be open to all ideas to get my project back on track.

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Anybody have any novel ideas, other than redesign to move the post? Anybody dealt with anything similar? Any help appreciated, thanks



Submitted July 27, 2022 at 06:43PM by CaptainFacePunch https://ift.tt/MJzhwcl

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