On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 11:41:23 GMT, Tony Bryer
wrote:

In article , Mike
Mitchell wrote:
but I was wondering what a brand new house is like in
the loft. In a modern house, the walls are usually stud
type, i.e. not load-bearing. So how strong are the ceiling
joists in the loft in a modern house? How to they stay up
without load-bearing walls to support them?

The roof is usually constructed of trussed rafters - see
http://www.trussed-rafters.co.uk/ttypes.htm for typical shapes -
which bear on the external walls only: any support given by
internal partitions is purely incidental. They are perfectly
strong enough for the design loads but no stronger than required
- computer design minimises the sizes of the timber members and
connecting plates. Generally you would expect the ceiling ties to
be capable of taking a distributed load of about 0.75kN/m2 or
15lb/ft2

Basically, the lofts in these modern houses don't sound to me anything
like as sturdy as in my ex-council house! Maybe I should buy TWO ex-LA
semis where I want to move to (Lincs) and make a single home out of
them. Or live in one half and rent out the other half.

By the way, does the quality of council house building vary across the
country? Where were the best ones built?

MM