Structural Engineer

Bazman

Hi there,

As you may know (from other posts) I have been renovating a flat I bought recently.

The next stage is to look at the loft. We had hoped to go for a complete conversion but that is looking a little too much of a stretch right now.

The other alternative is simply to have an attic turned into a storage space. In this case they will simply put down insulation flooring and plaster the walls. However there will be no strengthening work done (no steels) added or anything like that no heating etc. As the name suggests its just for storage it it not to be used to put bathrooms or any other very heavy items in there.

My only problem is that one builder swears I still need the steels (in which case I am looking at LC money) whilst the other one does not but seems iffy in just hw much weight the final storage space will be able to take.

In light of such uncertainty I am thinking to get a stuctural engineer.

So can someone please recommend a structural engineer in the South East London area and give me a heads up to a his likely cost?

I simply want a survey of the floors strengh and how much weight can be stored int the loft. This is much reduced from the pre LC conversion jobs they normally quote for.

Kind Regards

Baz

ormus

generally speaking, unless you are intending to store lead weights up there, (lots of em), you will be fine.
engineers build in a safety factor of 1.2 - 1.5 times the design required.

for general storage, you will be very unlikely to ever exceed those figures.

Bazman

Thats pretty much what one of the builders is saying.

Just to give some colour I have in excess of 500 books that will be stored in shelving along the wall.

Is there any rule of thimb I can use to get some kinda handle of the amount of stuff I can sotre up there?

tim123456789

Bazman wrote: »

Thats pretty much what one of the builders is saying.

Just to give some colour I have in excess of 500 books that will be stored in shelving along the wall.

Is there any rule of thimb I can use to get some kinda handle of the amount of stuff I can sotre up there?

I was going to say unless you want to store books!
The surveyor who did some work for me told me that he was currently working on a property where the whole of the upper floor had been turned into a libary and the weight of the books was too much for the floors, and that was a normal usable floor space.
But 500 is probably OK

Moomum

We are in Elrham and just had an engineers out, quotes we were getting were £90 per hour with a minimum of four hours. In end for structural calculations for 5 rsjs we paid £540

dave82_2

Call your local building control. If you have a good one they are really helpful in telling you what the regs are and waht calcs you need done.

Often for standard type stuff e.g. a single door opened up to a 6ft opeing they can tell you a standard RSJ size and sign off without calcs.

Kiran

If I understand right you are fixing shelving to the gable end wall? If so, the joists are not going to be effected, the load is being transfered down to the ground by the wall. At 1kg per book, assuming you stack them on say 5m of shelving thats only 20kg/m run. If however you do want to stack them on the floor if you spread them out then those kind of loads are pretty small, spread the load out evenly and it should be fine.

If however you need an absolute definitive answer, it may be best to get calculations done by someone who has done a site visit.

HTH