If you don t have access to your attic you can always look at your.
Bearing wall for attic.
To confuse matters further some types of construction such as post and beam or steel girder may not have any bearing walls at all except for the outside walls.
Also notice how the non load bearing walls from the picture above are parallel to the wall framing in the picture below.
If it s a load bearing wall the inspector may help size the beam or recommend that you have a structural engineer or architect size it.
The best way to tell if a wall is load bearing is to go in the attic ceiling space to see if there is any framing joists rafers trusses supported by that wall.
Adding a room in an attic can change the entire load bearing status of the walls below.
Using this technique you ll get a better idea of the location of the load bearing walls in your house.
Even without a second story the roof weighs a lot and.
August 19 2020 at 2 23 pm.
Find these by measuring or by studying a floor plan of your house.
Load bearing walls cross roof beams in a perpendicular direction.
In some cases you may not be able to tell for sure whether a wall is bearing.
If it is a small home usually roof framing is in one direction only north south or east west.
A load bearing wall almost always has ceiling or floor framing running perpendicular to it.
Climb up to the attic.
If you re unsure ask a building contractor or your local building inspector for advice.
For instance hanging or cutting ceiling joists adding stairways and adding attic rooms usually require the changing of non load bearing walls to load bearing walls.
During home renovations non load bearing walls can be made to bear weight and vice versa.
Load bearing walls support the weight of a floor or roof structure above and are so named because they bear a load.
By contrast a non load bearing wall sometimes called a partition wall is responsible only for holding up itself.
Look for these from the attic.
If a wall doesn t have any walls posts or other supports directly above it it s far less likely that it s load bearing.
Walls that are stacked may be load bearing.
How to find a load bearing wall.
Ceiling or floor joists that are spliced over the wall or end at the wall mean the wall is bearing.
