Shovel off your deck

Made a nice mountain in the backyard! I estimated each shovel full to be around 30 pounds, multiply that by about a thousand times (well thats what it felt like) and you have A Whole Flippin' Lot Of Heavy Snow(tm) weighing the deck down. I don't know what my townhouse desk is rated at for weight, but seeing how they cut corners in so many places in ours and the neighbors houses I don't trust it a whole lot!

Anyway, with another 7-15 inches coming soon its a good idea to shovel your deck off.

 

dude , what kind of shovel do you got? A gallon of water is about 6.5 lbs, so you moved about 5 gallons of water with each shovel full? That is a really big shovel.

 

A big plastic one, and based off lifting an entire 21" or so section of compacted snow. I lift 25lb dumbbells at the gym, so I compared it to that. Maybe I'm wrong, whatever. Its still a lot of weight.

 

My husband cleared off the roof of our covered deck last night. Actually, our au pair did most of the work as she was agile enough to climb up the gabled roof and hack away at the top, while my husband worked the edges. I took pictures instead.

But, there's a HUGE snow pile behind the deck that one of my boys insisted on jumping into at 11pm last night!

 

30 lbs huh?

Let me bring over 2 bowling balls and somehow attach them to your shovel, I bet you struggle MIGHTLY to lift them. You may be lifting 30ish lbs factoring in physics (weight + distance from your body = torque) but the actual weight of the snow is probably 12-15 lbs.

 

Christ fine you all are @!#$ing jerks. Admins - please change my 30lbs to 4oz. I'm now shoveling with a kids sand scoop.

 

After the weekend snow, I felt its too much weight for the deck to handle, so I cleared most of the snow on Sunday evening....

We had around waist height snow in our deck.

I lift 20 lbs dumbells, but I could do only 3 sets of 15 repetitions, which is 45 times. I can't handle more than that.

With this in mind, I don't think a shovel full of snow would weigh 30 lbs, probably 6-10 lbs.

 

Alright already geez, he's just suggesting you clean off your deck.

 

That's right. Little exaggeration is fine. Bottomline is clear off your deck to reduce the weight.....

Otherwise, we will see few new threads in 2-3 days asking deck builder recommendation.....

 

I am no math genius, but using the formula below (Posted by KAOSDAD) in a different thread his numbers may not be too far off.

"And rememeber kids - snow weighs, on average, 15 pounds per cubic foot. A two car drave way averages 20' x 35' with about 2' snow =
20x35x2 = 2500 CF x15 pounds/cf = 22500 pounds or 11.25 TONS."

Best guess is snow shovel 18-24" wide and if you only got half of the 32.5" (Dulles Airport total) 16.25" that should be close enough to 30 lbs for each shovel full to stop messing with him.

Enjoy the next round of shoveling!

 

This was printed in the Washington Post today:

 

Thanks for the great laugh Yep, gotta be careful what you say here - seems everyone's armed with a microscope!

 

...amd waayyy too much time on their hands! (Just sayin')

 

On Ch. 4 one of the weather guys weighed a shovel full of snow. 20 lbs.

 

Recommendations to shovel off your deck are good ones - regardless of the specifics on calculations. I'd like to think our decks can withstand that type of load, but the roof collapse at the Safeway (as well as other area roof collapses) shows that these loads are capable of causing structural collapse. This is especially true for uncovered decks, where all the stress is on a flat structure, as opposed to a roof truss system.

 

koasgirl and I did that...was a heavy job no doubt about it - especailly as some of it was saturated by melt then refreeze. Was nice to see the deck dry for 2 days. Never mind competeing with what the weight of it all was. What I know for sure is it was pretty demanding work.

 

NOW THAT IS HILARIOUS!! I'm with you John!