Look for these from the attic.
Bearing wall for attic.
Every house uses load bearing walls to stabilize the structure and support the weight of the home above.
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.
In some cases you may not be able to tell for sure whether a wall is bearing.
This is also true when looking in the attic.
If it is a small home usually roof framing is in one direction only north south or east west.
By contrast a non load bearing wall sometimes called a partition wall is responsible only for holding up itself.
How to find a load bearing wall.
If you don t have access to your attic you can always look at your.
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.
Find these by measuring or by studying a floor plan of your house.
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.
A load bearing wall almost always has ceiling or floor framing running perpendicular to it.
Load bearing walls cross roof beams in a perpendicular direction.
If the wall is located directly under the attic you can go up there to study the positions of the beams and joists.
Ceiling or floor joists that are spliced over the wall or end at the wall mean the wall is bearing.
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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.
Climb up to the attic.
Also notice how the non load bearing walls from the picture above are parallel to the wall framing in the picture below.
Using this technique you ll get a better idea of the location of the load bearing walls in your house.
Load bearing walls support the weight of a floor or roof structure above and are so named because they bear a load.
Even without a second story the roof weighs a lot and.