Truss roof and storage

Hi

Does anyone know if we can board out parts of the roof space and store items up there? Or do truss roofs not take load other than insulation and ceilings?

Cheers

Roof Trusses / Framing designed to AS1684.2 (Residential Timber-Framed Construction Non-Cyclonic) are not typically designed to hold storage load or trafficable loads. The truss / frame will need to be designed to AS1720.1 (Timber Structures - Design Methods) which is the more general timber framing code.

I want to eventually do this to my roof, however I do not want to hassle the builder at this time. I will strengthen the roof truss myself later to accommodate my assumed storage loads.

Hi room4acubby

How do you go about strengthening the roof truss myself later to accommodate storage loads. Is it hard to do

cheers

BATMAN

I suppose the honest answer is I don't know because I haven't done it yet.

Being a structural engineer, myself however may make it easier . The bottom chord of the roof truss is predominantly there to take tensile forces as part of the truss arrangement and to support local roofing and insulation etc. By nailing chipboard in at certain intervals and ensuring that you span over sufficient bottom chords and to the the truss intersection points I am sure that you are actually adding strength to the roof. You'll need to check the additional self weight, the capacities of the remainder of the truss and any future expected loading combinations.

Depending on the outcome you may need to add extra timbers to the existing truss as well as the chipboard.

When I do it I will run a few numbers, add a factor of safety to 2.0 and then take it away when I see how much I have to spend.

room4acubby

When you make the calculation can you copy me in? Way over my head I am afraid!

Cheers

Interesting stuff, room4acubby, thanks for that.