Attic Support Beams

Drive nails through the floor directly in front of the trimmers and then go beneath the floor and look for the nail shanks to determine the exact trimmer location.

Attic support beams.

This is where a high pitched roof is necessary. So if there s an attic rather than living space above the bearing wall you want to remove. You can t beat sawn lumber for most small window headers but as spans and loads increase stronger materials are a better choice. Beams need solid support all the way down to another beam or the house foundation.

Let s consider a basic gable wood roof framing design. Sistering is the process of adding a new joist next to each existing joist. Continuing on from part 3. 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.

The image below shows a cross section of our simple 12 x 13 house from the joist span tables section of this tutorial. The same is true for beams like structural ridge beams and center girders. A great deal depends on the pitch of the roof. Too often builders gang together 2 inch dimension lumber to support roof and floor loads without considering other options.

Here we have a wood framed gable roof. If the attic joists are not adequate one way to strengthen the floor for live loads is to sister the old joists. Floor beam span tables of residential structural design we will now look at roof rafter and beam design. Once again a 2 by 4 inch piece of lumber is placed between the trusses and parallel to the ceiling joists.