I need your help on attic boarding!

dirtychinchilla

dirtychinchilla

dirtychinchilla

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Joined
2 May 2011
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12,026
Location
Woking
Afternoon all,

We've got a baby on the way so I need to evacuate my office room to make way for her. Some of the stuff is going in the attic and the rest of it will probably find a home elsewhere.

I've just been looking around up there and I have already bought some loft legs, but I'm finally at the point of being reading to put some down. What I can't work out is where makes sense to board - there are bits of wood everywhere!!

I completely appreciate that I can't remove any of the vertical or diagonal pieces of timber, but it looks to me like the small horizontal pieces probably should have been removed as they don't appear to do anything - they're probably for craning stuff in but not actually load bearing.

Just hoping someone could input on my terrible photos. Moving this horizontal pieces would mean I could at least make a path from the hatch to somewhere useful!! The one that's really in the way is in the image below. If it wasn't there, I could at least stand up and walk through. The other, large horizontal beams, will definitely be staying put.

Thanks in advance,

dirtychinchilla

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You need to roll up the insulation on the floor to reveal the joists, that's where the legs go and then boards on top of the legs.
 
Pretty sure those all need to remain, or need reinforcement elsewhere. Those horizontal pieces help provide some rigidity sideways.
 
Semple said:
Pretty sure those all need to remain, or need reinforcement elsewhere. Those horizontal pieces help provide some rigidity sideways.
Click to expand...

I did wonder that. I also wondered if they could be moved upwards as that one specifically is at waist height. It wouldn't be so bad if you had to crawl under, or step over, it.
 
I wouldn't be removing any timber because they could be part of the calculated structural load of the roof. It'll be expensive to employ someone to assess it too.

If it were me (and because I enjoy doing it :D) I'd 3D model the roof area of the trusses and joists to work out any usable space, where the loft legs can go and the shapes of the boards.

Alternatively you could make shelves between the trusses as long as you can keep the weight down of whatever you are storing.
 
Yup, carefully look under the insulation for your joists. Do not mess with anything else attached to the roof in that picture :D
 
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