I work for a local building department and we a customer come in who would like to use your product for an elevated, freestanding deck. My question pertains to the lateral support. The deck is floating; so it can not be attached to the house. It's 10' x 12' and can be no higher than 30 (local criteria). What is the method for resisting lateral loads, or racking? I can't see how two 2 -1/2" toe screws into the end grain of a 4x4 post will resist any load.

If there were only a few connections like a conventional deck, this would be a problem. But, this system takes all of the lateral forces and divides it out over a large qty of connections. I don't have all of the numbers in front of me but let's use some relative numbers. If there was a total lateral force factor of 100, a 12x16 conventional deck with only 4 post (not attached to the house for this explanation) would need to accommodate 25 for each post connection. The FFDS has 24 post connections, and factor of 4.16 for each post. A dramatic decrease in load factor due to a large qty of connections.

I understand the size of the deck has a direct result on the number of posts, and the lateral load distribution. But at what point does the lateral load become an issue? In your example you

For deck heights above 30 inches and below 60 inches 2x4 diagonal bracing is REQUIRED.

I attached a link from our website pertaining to this.

www.deckplans.com/howto_bracing.html