Installing Plywood Floor In Attic

Here are a few tips to help you and your house get through the attic flooring installation job.

Installing plywood floor in attic.

Start with the attic floor. If your attic joists won t bear the weight necessary to finish out a living space but the engineer cleared them to support floor decking for light storage you can install inch plywood or. With all these challenges you might start thinking that attic flooring installation is impossible. We found untapped storage space in the attic that was just waiting to be utilized.

The previous homeowner may have simply covered the joists with plywood to use the space for storage. We used plywood sheets readily available at lumberyards cut into 2 by 4 foot panels and installed them perpendicularly to the floor joists with a screw gun. The decision regarding the thickness of plywood to use for the subfloor in the attic has a lot to do with how you intend to use the attic and it also depends on the spacing of the ceiling joists. Before putting the flooring in take a look at your insulation.

The solid base allows you to store items in the attic as well as to walk. Because the simplest and cheapest way to insulate an attic is to add material to the floor. But if the floor is covered in plywood you can t stuff enough insulation beneath it to do the job sufficiently not even in warm climates. Stop using your attic for storage.

Attics with existing flooring. Plywood floor in attic of older home. Attic flooring consists of materials as basic as sheets of plywood as well as more elaborate interlocking floor systems. Heat rises so the insulation in your attic is the most important part of your home s insulation.

It isn t but you ll need a dose of common sense to execute the job of installing an attic floor properly. According to the us department of energy your home s attic should have an r 38 insulation valued for homes in the southern part of the. First you ll need to measure the area you want to floor so you can calculate how much wood you ll require. Plan to pull up the flooring and layer new.

To floor an attic you ll need to install a sub floor for support before laying your plywood floor. Alternatively your attic may already have some sort of floor but this doesn t necessarily mean you can build rooms.