Hi All,

Realized we missed a connection detail that could hamper our thermal efficiency, so figured I'd ask you fine folks if you know of an elegant (or at least workable) solution.

The house isn't built yet (just at the finalizing drawing stage).
It's a 2-story insulated concrete form, with an exterior balcony.

I received the plans back from the drafter, and it has the detail shown. Seems to be like it's going to create thermal bridging, especially in our down to -40C winters.

Any suggestions on how to improve this detail? Due to the design of the house, removing the balcony entirely would look severely odd. I'm not certain we could independently support it either.


Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

As much as I loathe the indiscriminate use of closed cell spray polyurethane, a couple inches of ccSPF on the band joists for the deck & balcony sides, and on the concrete wall where the interior floor trusses sit on the ledger, would cut the thermal bridging by quite a bit.

Be sure that the joist hangers on the deck side get at least an inch of foam over them, since the thermal bridging of the steel is quite a bit higher than the joists themselves. The ccSPF on the exterior side would need to be protected from UV degradation by painting it. There are many mop-on or spray-on coatings for polyurethane roofs that would do the trick.