If you don t have access to your attic you can always look at your.
Bearing wall for attic.
During home renovations non load bearing walls can be made to bear weight and vice versa.
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.
Walls that are stacked may be load bearing.
August 19 2020 at 2 23 pm.
By contrast a non load bearing wall sometimes called a partition wall is responsible only for holding up itself.
Even without a second story the roof weighs a lot and.
If it is a small home usually roof framing is in one direction only north south or east west.
How to find a load bearing wall.
In some cases you may not be able to tell for sure whether a wall is bearing.
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.
A load bearing wall almost always has ceiling or floor framing running perpendicular to it.
Load bearing walls support the weight of a floor or roof structure above and are so named because they bear a load.
Look for these from the attic.
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.
Find these by measuring or by studying a floor plan of your house.
Climb up to the attic.
If the wall is located directly under the attic you can go up there to study the positions of the beams and joists.
If you re unsure ask a building contractor or your local building inspector for advice.
Load bearing walls cross roof beams in a perpendicular direction.
Also notice how the non load bearing walls from the picture above are parallel to the wall framing in the picture below.
This is also true when looking in the attic.
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.