How Much Weight To Put In An Attic

An uninhabitable attic not designed for storage can handle a 10 pounds per square foot live load.

How much weight to put in an attic.

How much weight your attic will hold depends a lot on the floor structure. Dead weight essentially means an attic that is only used for storing boxes and for very limited traffic. Spacing between each beam is 14 4. 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. I m guessing you don t have the plans and don t know what live load the attic was designed for. Hard to measure since i already have a lot of stuff in the attic but i think that they are. Length of the beams.

I want to know how much weight i can put in the attic. Attic floors often are built to accommodate only a maximum dead weight load. 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. Joists that are 2x8 or larger can likely support more weight.

An uninhabitable attic designed for limited storage can handle 20 pounds per square foot live load. If they are 2x6 you can probably get away with some boxes filled with relatively light stuff. Think empty boxes and suitcases. A floor structure supported with 2 4 joists cannot bear much weight.

I put the floor in about twelve.