Good evening. This is my first post here. I'm in the process of building a porch on the front of my house. Everything has been going fine, but I've run into a small problem. Where one of the corner posts is being set, there is a buried oil tank. The frost line here in Illinois is around 36". The depth at this location is only 24 inches. I knew the tank was there, so I've dug that hole by hand and have finally met resistance. So, my question is, how should I proceed to set this post since I can't get below the frost line in this one location. The rest of the piers/footings will be deep enough, but this one has me baffled. I was considering using a diamond pier foundation, but I'm scared of hitting the tank when I drive the pins in. Any ideas would be much appreciated. I attached a pic of the pier that is having the issue. Thanks in advance. [ATTACH]68542[/ATTACH]

I had to do the fence just few weeks back and decided i'm going to build a deck. My dad and I pretty handy so we're sure we have no issues. When the guys came to do the fence I had them put down a few footings. I wanted a 12ftx12ft deck and the guy put down 4 footings at 8.5ft apart forming a square. The issue was I didn't plan for the height because I hadn't looked into the beam and joist sizes at that time, i thought it would be enough. Now the footings is done, I'm trying to see the clearance, it seems like with the beam directly on the saddle/footing, it would be perfect so I can't use any post. But the issue is that the footings were not laser level or anything so one can be a few inches too low or too high so shims would not work. I can't think of any way for adjustment. My solution is to still use posts, however with the beams bolted to the side of the 6x6 instead of on the top, I 've read few sites where they said side connection is not good because all the forces would be on the bolt. However this way it allows me to adjust for beam levelling, once I bolt on the beams on the posts, if there is any gap between the concrete footing and the beam, i can put in some support between the beam and the concrete footing for force transfer. If it's resting on the side of the footing then it's perfect as all the force would be transfer to the concrete footing and be supported by the bolts at the same time. Because my deck is so low, in my area, a permit is not required. I guess the government isn't too concern for deck this low because even a footing fails or structure fails, it wouldn't come crashing since the beams are just inches from the ground. But all my beam and joist sizes, spacing are done per standard code. Just need to figure out this footing to beam connection Any suggestions, please advise and thanks so much [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/6wSUYWD.jpg[/IMG]