Do I Need To Reinforce My Loft Floor

Furthermore squashing insulation down to fit joist height is a bad idea as this halves it s effectiveness doubling your heat loss.

Do i need to reinforce my loft floor.

Either way they are put in to lend support to weakening walls and floors. 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. The best solution is to build a raised loft floor above the insulation details of which are shown below. Floor joists will help to bring up walls that seem to be falling in.

While not the ultimate voice in spans these calculators do provide a reality check. You may need to reinforce your floor joists if you have saggy floors in your house. They can even be found in the basements of homes. I ve not gone down the regulations route as it s not going to be used as a bedroom.

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. 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. If you re not confident get an electrician to do the electrics. Floor joists can be found under the house for example in the crawl space.

Ive just strengthened my loft floor. 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. 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 loft room will also have to be separated by a fire door either at the top or bottom of the new stairs.