How To Strengthen Your Attic Floor

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.

How to strengthen your attic floor.

Mike embarks on a project to lay a floor in the attic loft space. Sistering is the process of adding a new joist next to each existing joist. If the attic joists are not adequate one way to strengthen the floor for live loads is to sister the old joists. If your floors are bouncy and also noticeably sagging they probably are too weak.

Start with the attic 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. Because the simplest and cheapest way to insulate an attic is to add material to the floor.

Strengthening attic joists for live loads by sistering. First you ll need to measure the area you want to floor so you can calculate how much wood you ll require. Long spans of joists in newer homes may wobble or bounce from foot traffic. However flooring your attic can make it a perfect place for storage.

Fortunately there are attic flooring solutions that work well in the often harsh and unheated. You can stiffen the floor in just one room or in as many rooms as you like. Flooring your attic is the best way to add space to your home at a low cost. Mike embarks on a project to lay a floor in the attic loft space.

This article will show you three better ways to take the bounce out of a floor. To floor an attic you ll need to install a sub floor for support before laying your plywood floor. The methods we ll cover make floors stiffer but not necessarily stronger. How to make floor joists stronger.

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.