Mike:
I'm sure that's just as solid. There's enough bearing surface that the subfloor won't crush. Cutting the hole in the subfloor is a pain. We do it mainly to keep the post from moving around too much until we nail the straps to the posts. We usaully wait until the end to do that, so we can bump the bottoms around a little to plumb them up. We make the same choices for the basement posts. Solid where visible, built-up where hidden. Good idea with the tar paper. Do you guys do anything for uplift, like the tiedown straps? Engineers that I've worked with really love them. CB.
