Cutting Trusses For Attic Access

If the roof slope is steeper than 9 inches in 12 inches of run it doesn t take much width to end up with a nice room 12 feet wide with an 8 foot.

Cutting trusses for attic access.

Currently there is limited attic storage on a plywood subfloor on the bottom chords accessed via a small hatch in a closet. Cutting the bottom chord of an attic truss i worked for an old school new england carpenter for a couple years when i was 15 16 years old. Trusses are similar to roof rafters. You can easily cut your ceiling joists and use the off cut if big enough to but end where the cut was and fix appropriately on the two adjoining joists trusses whatever.

I remember on one house he told me that you never ever ever ever cut a truss. He she not talking about hacking his roof joist just making an opening in his ceiling. Homeowners should avoid cutting or modifying their roof trusses. Our home has 2x4 roof trusses spanning 25 ft.

Do the same at the other end and then cut your ceiling to match the opening. The sad fact is your builder could have installed attic trusses over this garage for just slightly more than what the existing trusses cost. Where possible choose a size and location for your attic ladder that allows it to fit between existing ceiling joists or trusses. Just last night i was talking with an associate who picked up a small job cutting in an attic access pull down door and placing a bunch of sheets of plywood on the ceiling joists.

When a truss becomes damaged cut or modified there is a. Your parents roof rafters were probably made from 2x8 s and could have been 2x10 s or. Let s compare common roof trusses with the roof framing materials that were used in your parent s house. One use of trusses is for the support of a roof.

While they look the same you probably didn t notice the subtle differences. In some cases the ladder may fit into an existing attic access hatch. Attic ladder kits are made to fit between existing framing in the ceiling that is the floor of the attic. Most common attic trusses for homes and garages are made with 2x4 s.

I asked him if any of the joists were actually part of a truss and the answer was oh yeah. We would like to install a fold down attic stair with a rough opening size of 25 5 in. Attic trusses have a rectangular shape inside each truss. X 54 in with the long dimension perpendicular to the trusses.