How Much Weight To Put In An Attic

I put the floor in about twelve.

How much weight to put in an attic.

How much weight your attic will hold depends a lot on the floor structure. Attic floors often are built to accommodate only a maximum dead weight load. Live weight load refers to the total weight carried by the floor including furnishings occupants and all other permanent and temporary objects. As a very general guide if the joists are only 2x4s don t plan on storing much in the attic other than very lightweight items.

A floor structure that is not solid enough cannot hold up much weight and the floor structure can only be sturdy enough if strong and large joists support it. Length of the 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. I m guessing you don t have the plans and don t know what live load the attic was designed for.

Dead weight essentially means an attic that is only used for storing boxes and for very limited traffic. A floor structure supported with 2 4 joists cannot bear much weight. The joists are what support the weight. Spacing between each beam is 14 4.

An uninhabitable attic designed for limited storage can handle 20 pounds per square foot live load. Think empty boxes and suitcases. Hard to measure since i already have a lot of stuff in the attic but i think that they are. If they are 2x6 you can probably get away with some boxes filled with relatively light stuff.

I want to know how much weight i can put in the attic.