Attic Support Beams

A great deal depends on the pitch of the roof.

Attic support beams.

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. Once again a 2 by 4 inch piece of lumber is placed between the trusses and parallel to the ceiling joists. You can t beat sawn lumber for most small window headers but as spans and loads increase stronger materials are a better choice. Let s consider a basic gable wood roof framing design.

Sistering is the process of adding a new joist next to each existing joist. The image below shows a cross section of our simple 12 x 13 house from the joist span tables section of this tutorial. In the case of 2x6 joists you can pair them up with additional 2x6 joists by nailing them together side by side. A higher pitched roof would be better for extra living space than a lower pitched roof.

The same is true for beams like structural ridge beams and center girders. So if there s an attic rather than living space above the bearing wall you want to remove. Too often builders gang together 2 inch dimension lumber to support roof and floor loads without considering other options. The other is just used to support the trusses.

Beams need solid support all the way down to another beam or the house foundation. This is where a high pitched roof is necessary. 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. Here we have a wood framed gable roof.