Do I Need To Reinforce My Loft Floor

Floor joists can be found under the house for example in the crawl space.

Do i need to reinforce my loft floor.

Ive just strengthened my loft floor. The loft room will also have to be separated by a fire door either at the top or bottom of the new stairs. While not the ultimate voice in spans these calculators do provide a reality check. If you re not confident get an electrician to do the electrics.

For example with such a calculator you will find that for a 15 foot span you need 2x10 douglas fir heart joists spaced every 16 inches. I ve not gone down the regulations route as it s not going to be used as a bedroom. If your home wasn t designed to support a future attic conversion not only will the joist system require modification an engineer may require additional vertical reinforcement installed in the. Joists you may have thought adequate for your attic floor may not come close to being strong enough.

As always don t mess with electrics if you re not competent but even part k allows you to do a fair bit yourself. The new floor joists of your loft conversion will need to offer at least 30 minutes worth of fire protection which could mean replastering the ceilings in those first floor rooms below. The best solution is to build a raised loft floor above the insulation details of which are shown below. Either way they are put in to lend support to weakening walls and floors.

You can still board directly on to the joists if you want but it is worth noting that this would not pass a building control inspection because you wouldn t have the full 270mm depth of insulation required by regulations. Floor joists will help to bring up walls that seem to be falling in. They can even be found in the basements of homes. Furthermore squashing insulation down to fit joist height is a bad idea as this halves it s effectiveness doubling your heat loss.