My house was built in the 80,s by Winpeys. It has the common Flink
Trusses.

The span front to back is 8M there are 8 trusess across the house
spanning 4.5M.
Im looking to convert the loft into a habitable room over a longish
period of time as money permits.

What im looking for is the stages you need to go through to remove the
spars of the trusses.

Thats the first bit i want to do.

Does any one have any pictures of a conversion from start to finish.



thanks


garry

You need building regulations approval and before that the services of a
structural engineer.

Peter Crosland

"GarryNutter" wrote in message
ups.com...
My house was built in the 80,s by Winpeys. It has the common Flink
Trusses.

The span front to back is 8M there are 8 trusess across the house
spanning 4.5M.
Im looking to convert the loft into a habitable room over a longish
period of time as money permits.

What im looking for is the stages you need to go through to remove the
spars of the trusses.

Thats the first bit i want to do.

Does any one have any pictures of a conversion from start to finish.


http://www.internode.co.uk/loft/index.htm Would be a good start.
The owner is a regular poster here.

Steven Campbell wrote:
"GarryNutter" wrote in message
ups.com...
My house was built in the 80,s by Winpeys. It has the common Flink
Trusses.

The span front to back is 8M there are 8 trusess across the house
spanning 4.5M.
Im looking to convert the loft into a habitable room over a longish
period of time as money permits.

What im looking for is the stages you need to go through to remove the
spars of the trusses.

Thats the first bit i want to do.

Does any one have any pictures of a conversion from start to finish.


http://www.internode.co.uk/loft/index.htm Would be a good start.
The owner is a regular poster here.

I don't believe that was a modern truss roof.

MBQ

wrote:

http://www.internode.co.uk/loft/index.htm Would be a good start.
The owner is a regular poster here.


I don't believe that was a modern truss roof.

Nope it wasn't... having said that, some of the same approach may be
possible. A trussed roof would probably have less cross members and tie
beams to get in the way, and this may allow the introduction of the
floor joists between existing trusses without actually changing any of
them at that stage.

It would obviously be fiddly work however since you would be working
among all the extra wood of the trusses. A 4.5m span is within the
realms of possibility for a wood beam (or a flitch beam certainly). You
would probably need more holes through the roof however to get them in
there since any rotation or moving them about once in the loft is going
to be pretty difficult!

The harder bit is making sure you have adequate support in place before
you start trimming out the webbing of the trusses.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Thanks everyone, for the help. John your site is a aladins cave of
information. Could i ask how do you arrive at the position of the Knee
Wall.

As i only have 8 rafters i was going to sister a furthur 150*50 to each
rafter, and tie them in at the top, to make a triangle. Could i get
away with 150*50, coudnt find any information on the web of the correct
size for this.


thanks

garry

Garry Nutter wrote:

As i only have 8 rafters i was going to sister a furthur 150*50 to each
rafter, and tie them in at the top, to make a triangle. Could i get
away with 150*50, coudnt find any information on the web of the correct
size for this.

I've more often seen 2x4 used on old houses. But you need to put in
whatever the regs say now, for some reason.


NT

Garry Nutter wrote:

Thanks everyone, for the help. John your site is a aladins cave of
information. Could i ask how do you arrive at the position of the Knee
Wall.

The wall is a load bearing wall and takes the place of the purlin that
was removed from the front of the roof slope. So its position is chosen
to be roughly mid span of the front rafters and not that far from the
original purlin location. In reality it could go a few feet either way -
its location is not that critical.

As i only have 8 rafters i was going to sister a furthur 150*50 to each
rafter, and tie them in at the top, to make a triangle. Could i get
away with 150*50, coudnt find any information on the web of the correct
size for this.

To answer questions like this you need to do (or get done) some design
calculations based on the anticipated loadings. In many respects you
would probably find it easier to build a new floor without connecting it
in any way to the existing trusses. You could also take the same
approach to supporting the roof, or you could look at ways of reusing
some of original truss components. The difficult thing with the trusses
is that they are only structurally strong in their complete form. They
don't have much rigidity the moment you chop bits out of them (although
they are probably strong enough to hold up the facias and soffits by
themselves ;-)

150*50 is going to be well undersized for a floor at that span. It is
probably more heavy than required for rafters though. Having said that
it does depend on the type of roof and its pitch, and the spacings of
the rafters. Note there is no need to maintain the same spacing as the
trusses - you could insert more rafters if you wanted.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote:

The harder bit is making sure you have adequate support in place before
you start trimming out the webbing of the trusses.

Is it not on then to remove the additional matchstick forest from just
one truss, and add glued screwed additional depth to all 3 sides to
bring it upto required strength, and once done move onto the next one?


NT

wrote:

The harder bit is making sure you have adequate support in place before
you start trimming out the webbing of the trusses.


Is it not on then to remove the additional matchstick forest from just
one truss, and add glued screwed additional depth to all 3 sides to
bring it upto required strength, and once done move onto the next one?

That might also work. Not having done a trussed roof I am not famillier
with the range of methods used to deal with them. Building a new roof
supporting structure in parallel to the old would seem like a safe
option, but may well be more work than is actually required if you can
reuse some of the existing stuff. It will also depend a bit on what sort
of converison you are doing since in many cases you won't be keeping the
triangle shape of the trusses due to dormers etc.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

GarryNutter wrote:
My house was built in the 80,s by Winpeys. It has the common Flink
Trusses.

The span front to back is 8M there are 8 trusess across the house
spanning 4.5M.
Im looking to convert the loft into a habitable room over a longish
period of time as money permits.

What im looking for is the stages you need to go through to remove the
spars of the trusses.

My sister had this done and they basically built a whole new roof
structure out of very substiantial timbers paralle to the trusses and
tied to new timbers and steels in the floor. Only then were the old
trusses removed.

MBQ