A Cantilever Balcony for Dummies

Cantilever balcony on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

Ever notice how the less certain freelancers at eHow.com know about a topic, the more they write? Not that it's only at eHow.com, of course, but pretty much anyone who believed s/he could "write to any topic" was usually guilty of more than one case of utter bullshit. Take, for instance eHowian Rebecca Mecomber, who visited her journalistic skills on the topic "How to Design and Build A Cantilever Home Addition."

We should start here by defining cantilever, a step Rebecca neglected to perform. Dictionary.com tells us that a cantilever is "any rigid construction extending horizontally well beyond its vertical support." By definition, then, a cantilevered addition doesn't have vertical support at the outside edge (see the image above, a cantilever balcony at Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater). So why, then, does Rebecca tell us, 

"The cantilever addition perches atop concrete footings or piers nestled deep into the ground. The wooden framing is attached to the existing sill of the home"?

By definition, a cantilever addition hangs unsupported. And attached to the sill? Not normally: most such additions hang off an upper story... Mecomber's text comprises six steps, of which only one addresses building and then only in the most general terms: "Build the addition in steps: footings, framing, electrical wiring, plumbing, wall finishing, painting and furnishing. Expect the preparation work, such as digging the concrete footings or piers and connecting the framing to the existing home, to take several weeks. The addition must be sited properly and the concrete allowed to cure. Once the wall framing is installed, the remainder of the process will rapidly progress."

More with the concrete footings... Clearly, she was far out of her depth in even attempting to write this content. Sadly, that's been pretty much the norm for eHow's stable of dumbasses; including Mecomber, our Dumbass of the Day.

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