Best way to make a "roof" over second floor outside balcony/deck

[jayrod]

Hey guys. I am trying to figure out the best way to make a roof over our
2nd floor balcony/deck to keep rain out from the area underneath. Should I take the deck boards up and start over? Or put something like plywood over the top of them? I would like to be able to stain it. I will be redoing the rest of the deck later. Heres a video of it to get a picture, and keep in mind its under contsruction/messy. I want to add a light in the are later too.

- outside 2nd floor deck - YouTube

[HayZee518]

roof

from the looks of it, putting on a roof isn't gonna give you much pitch for the water to run off.
also judging from how far out the deck goes from the existing roof line there's very little pitch to be had.
your existing deck boards look very, very bleached from the sun almost to the point of dry rot and/or moldy.
Consider replacing it with a product called Ipe which is a brazilian hardwood. It ain't cheap but it has natural oils that repel water and snow.
My son put it on his deck which is exposed to the elements in Massachusetts.
ANYWAY you're gonna need some sort of ledger board out at the far end where the joists/rafters are gonna sit. I wouldn't go less than 2x6will this have a snow load on it?
what is the span from your roof to the outboard end?

[jayrod]

from the looks of it, putting on a roof isn't gonna give you much pitch for the water to run off.
also judging from how far out the deck goes from the existing roof line there's very little pitch to be had.
your existing deck boards look very, very bleached from the sun almost to the point of dry rot and/or moldy.
Consider replacing it with a product called Ipe which is a brazilian hardwood. It ain't cheap but it has natural oils that repel water and snow.
My son put it on his deck which is exposed to the elements in Massachusetts.
ANYWAY you're gonna need some sort of ledger board out at the far end where the joists/rafters are gonna sit. I wouldn't go less than 2x6will this have a snow load on it?
what is the span from your roof to the outboard end?

It never snows here, (South Ga.) and the run is about 7 ft from the roofline. Yeah its getting pretty bleached and dry which is another reason I wanna do this.