worried my house / roof will fall down

snit_girl

today I removed the platform that the old water tank sat on in the loft. I did this so we could have a bit more storage area, suitcases, christmas decorations, etc, and insulate up there.

The plaform was about a 4ft x 4ft bit of chipboard, resting on 2 bits of 2in x 4in wood, nailed across 2 8ft long, 2in x 5in bits (sorry for the rubbish description), if made a pic below of how it looked. It was nailed to a 2in x 3in bit of wood that is nailed to the frame. There were 2 nails put in either end diagonally, some badly as they missed the wood and came out the other side.

We have a very good handyman who said he would remove this platform, insulate and floor our loft whenever we were ready, but due to a run of bad luck we have used him for loads of things for about 4 months now and money has ran out. We saw insulation on offer (£3 a roll in homebase) so bought it and I decided to put it in myself and put down some loft boards as it's just for light, occasional use.

We live in a timber framed house, built in 1985, looks like a new build. I just assumed that the wood was so large so it could hold the old water tank and since the handyman was going to take it out anyway it would be fine.

All went well and I removed the platform, but when my mum saw the size of the large bits of wood I removed she panicked that they may be structural. She immediately phoned the handyman and he said it was fine to remove them (he is a neighbour and has converted his loft in his similar house).

Now I'm worried that I've done some damage and these should be replaced. Is it possible that they were holding something together? It was just 8 poorly out in nails and the frame and beams are all still there.

Sorry for the long post but it's very windy tonight and I'm flinching at every sound the house makes.

vaio

sleep easy, it'll be fine

booty40uk

Im assuming that the light colured outline is the timber you have removed and that the dark outlined timber is still in place, in which case there is no problem.

HTH

Andy

27col

If it is timber framed house the roof will be fully trussed and quite suitable for the job of supporting the roof covering. It is quite normal for water tanks to be installed on additional extra timbers. They are there to provide a bit of extra height for the gravity feed, and also to spread the load of the weight of water over more trusses so as to reduce the footprint and point loading of the water. Water is very heavy, a 50 gallon tank will weigh 500lbs so any spreading of the load is a good thing.

Mankysteve

Remember one liter of water is one kilogram roughly so supporting structure for the tank will be pretty substantially. If daught get a proper structural engineer in not a "handyMan" but tbh looking at those drawing i would sya it'll be fine but I'm not a structural engineer.

Swipe

Nothing to worry about. If the house hadn't ever had a tank, the platform and extra wood wouldn't have been there anyway. As others have said, imagine the weight of the water in the tank, now there is no weight, so no support needed.