After several centuries of service floor joists in older homes may sag or crack.
How to strengthen your attic floor.
How to make floor joists stronger.
Flooring your attic is the best way to add space to your home at a low cost.
If your attic joists won t bear the weight necessary to finish out a living space but the engineer cleared them to support floor decking for light storage you can install inch plywood or.
Start with the attic floor.
If your floors are bouncy and also noticeably sagging they probably are too weak.
You ll have to construct a wooden frame or sub floor with boards 16 inches apart to provide extra support for the floor.
You can stiffen the floor in just one room or in as many rooms as you like.
The methods we ll cover make floors stiffer but not necessarily stronger.
In massachusetts attic floors must support at least 30 lbs ft live load the same as bedroom floors if the attic is accessed by means of a fixed stairway 780 cmr 5502 3 1 use a span table to determine the necessary joist dimensions given their span length spacing wood species and grade.
Because the simplest and cheapest way to insulate an attic is to add material to the floor.
This article will show you three better ways to take the bounce out of a floor.
If the attic joists are not adequate one way to strengthen the floor for live loads is to sister the old joists.
Mike embarks on a project to lay a floor in the attic loft space.
Strengthening attic joists for live loads by sistering.
However flooring your attic can make it a perfect place for storage.
Long spans of joists in newer homes may wobble or bounce from foot traffic.
Stop using your attic for storage.
To floor an attic you ll need to install a sub floor for support before laying your plywood floor.
Doing so the wrong way means that you could weaken your structure squash your insulation or find yourself with one foot planted firmly through the sheetrock ceiling below.
But if the floor is covered in plywood you can t stuff enough insulation beneath it to do the job sufficiently not even in warm climates.
Mike embarks on a project to lay a floor in the attic loft space.