If you plan on expanding the available space in your home by renovating the attic, then it is generally a good idea to consult with a flooring company in San Diego. For starters, these services can help you design the adequate floors that will be supported by the structure according to type of building. Many homeowners think they can build a floor on their own in the attic simply because they discovered that the space has the joists set in place. However, this guide would like to warn you that the joists are there to support the ceiling bellow and not a new floor in most situations.
What if the attic has a floor already?
In some cases, the joists in the attic are built intentionally to account for the expanding purposes that homeowners may have in the future. While this is one of the best methods of cutting down the costs when you decide you need more living space in the home, in the vast majority of cases, the joists and floors are not built to support a new living area. At the same time, the previous owner of the home could have simply covered the joists with plywood in order to create an efficient storage space.
In general, there is a simple means of telling the purpose of the joists in the attic: if they are between 2’’ x 4’’ or 2’’ x 6’’ they are not suitable for designing a living space. In case the joists are bigger and heftier, then they are able to support the furniture and equipment that you want to place in your new room. In addition to the dimensions of the joists, you also need to account for the spacing between them and the load they can support. Overall, the joists built for storage purposes only need to support a weight of 10 pounds per square foot, while the ones built for living accommodations need to support a weight four times bigger.
How can San Diego flooring services solve the problem?
By calling on the help of professionals, you can have the guarantee that the span calculations of the current joists are accurate. Armed with this information, the floor services will present you with a couple of ideas on how to upgrade the current joists in order to make them suitable for supporting accommodations for a new living space. As a side note, considering that the attic structure is likely to have electrical or other types of wiring, it is best to avoid a DYI approach when modifying the joists.
Two of the common procedures that the floor services will recommend in this situation are the intersperse joists approach and the sister joists method. The intersperse method implies combining the existing joists with similar-sized spars. The other approach entails pairing a joist that is damaged or inadequate to support the necessary weight with another member. For instance, the flooring in San Diego services can connect a 2’’ x 4’’ joist with another 2’’ x 4’’ joist by nailing them together.
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