Loft conversion structural calculations

Loft conversions have become a popular choice with homeowners who would prefer to stay where they are but need a bit of habitable space to accommodate a growing family or to create a comfortable home office to allow them to work from home.

A lot of people are now realising that having a loft conversion can work out much cheaper than selling up and moving house, so if you love where you live and get on well with your neighbours then this is a very viable option.

However, having a loft conversion isn’t always as straightforward as you may believe. Depending on the type and build of your home, your loft may not have been built to take a full domestic loads. So you may have to do more strengthening work to achieve a habitable conversion of the existing loft space.

How GL Design Services can help

Working out your loft conversion support can be a bit of a headache but by bringing in our highly knowledgeable and experienced team, we can thoroughly inspect your loft and its adaptability from a structural point of view.

We will take into consideration your revised roof layout and recommend adequate strengthening measures or specify a new members to ensure any dormers, internal partitions including access voids have the required capacity and stiffness to satisfy Ultimate and Serviceability Limit States.

Steel beam calculations

In most cases, you will need to have a steel beam installation to carry the new weight of the floor where you don’t have any load-bearing walls or there are significant openings created in such walls below. We will do all the structural steel beam calculations and calculations for the bearing padstones.

We will ensure that the additional loads from your new loft are safely transferred to the ground and do not overstress existing foundations.

It is usually the case that you will need steel beam supports when you want to add dormer windows such as a structural ridge beam. We can do the calculations for all the steel beams you need to support your conversion plans.

Utilising existing load bearing features

Depending on the age and structure of your home, it may be that you have existing load-bearing walls running right up to the top of your roof. In these cases, it can be possible to utilise these load-bearing walls to support new loft loads.

However, should there be any doubt about the strength and integrity of the existing walls, it is always wise to play safe and use steel supports. All of these things will be considered and worked out with our fully comprehensive loft conversion calculations service.

If you are considering adding a loft conversion to your home, then do not hesitate to get in touch with us to discuss your ideas. We are happy to answer any questions you may have and can give you some sound advice about the viability of the job.