On 29 Mar 2006 08:54:01 -0800, wrote:

Thanks for the advice.

I have a strange hobby. I collect and restore old arcade games.. that
weigh in at an average of about 275lbs each and have a foot print of
about 2'wide x 3'deep each. I have a spare 10' x 11' bed room (in a
third floor condo) and I am trying to figure out if the room can handle
the weight of 9 games. I will have the games positioned around the
edge of the room so.. I figure that if the joists are going 'with'
the games I will probably have at beast 2 joists supporting 4 games and
of the joists are going 'against' the games I will probably have
about 2 joists supporting 2 games which might be better.

If anybody more familiar with construction loads can give me some
advice that would be great. I think current building code in WA is a
minimum of 30lbs per square foot live load but I have received so much
input on the issue (negative and positive) that I am a little confused
at the moment. I know people do heavy fish tanks, water beads, grand
pianos, weight machines, etc, etc but I might be talking about a little
more weight than most of those.


30 PSF live load is the minumum for a upper story (bedroom) in most
codes. A building that was purpose-built as a multi-family is
probably designed to 40 PSF, or possibly 50 PSF.

At 30 PSF, the room will theoretically hold 10' x 11' x 30 psf =3300
pounds, which works out to 12 machines, 11 machines and 1 person,
or 9 machines and a

Even at the 30 PSF that's supposed to be an average, so if you
don't put down a solid row of the ALONG the joists you should
be ok. And the failure more will be sagging, bouncy floors,
and cracking in the plaster/drywall of the ceiling below long
before an actual failure is likely.

If you know which way the floor joists go, and where a load-
bearing (generally exterior) wall is, then lay a pair of 2x6s
across the ends of the joists to spread the load a bit, and
then line the machines up on those, and you should be fine.
If the games have ballast in them, you might remove or
reduce that and store the ballast somewhere else.