New floor between old walls

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Evening all,
Just to explain, we've got an old millhouse and I'm looking to build a new floor over the mill workings. The walls are rubble built in soft limestone/chalk.
The original floor I'd like to keep as it's a great old feature however it's never going to be a decent load bearing floor as it wasn't designed to bear much weight.
My plan is to build a new floor over the top of it, the dimensions of the room are 6.5x4.5m.Because the walls aren't great I'm not crazy about the idea of bashing a couple of dozen holes in the wall for the new joists to fit into so I'm looking for alternatives (any suggestions welcome) I've seen online someone using an L shaped steel as a wall plate and bolting it onto his old walls for his joists to sit onto. Would this be an option, perhaps using individual joist hangers in order to follow the line of the wall better. I'm sceptical about the strength of this, but it would certainly be an easy solution.
The floor will hold a bedroom and small ensuite.
Cheers for any feedback.
Jim
 
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Putting up a wall-plate is a solution, but the question is, is the stone in the wall strong enough to take a 10/12 mm bar 150 mmm long ( as an example) without crumbling either when drilled or when load applied ?

Had similar problem and did put up a wall plate but stone was harder which relieved me of worrying about that point.

One unexpected problem was that my stones vary considerably in size and in several places I had difficulties as numerous small stones meant I had to modify original spacing to get strong hold.
 
If I understand correctly, you want to add a second floor to divide one large high space into two lower ceilinged rooms?

Since you seem concerned about the walls bearing the loads with the new floor joists, why not knock through the existing floor in several places (small) and create a slab with footers up to spec, then build new pillars for the floor joists to rest on and take the weight?
These pillars could be made out of rustic wood or anything to remain in keeping.
 
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The idea of building a frame within the building sounds like it could work well, I'd considered building piers to sit the new floor on, but setting oak pillars into the floor and building upon that would be a great solution.
I think you're right about the crumbly stone being a problem mountainwalker, I could get away with it if the walls were big blocks of granite, but this stuff is like chalk rubble!
 

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