Cold water tank support

[simongii]

Hi,

I hope someone can help.

I have a rather large CWT, not sure of the total capacity as I write this but recall at some point thinking it would be equivalent to 2 adults.

My house is rectangular with quite a steep pitched roof, hipped at both ends. There are two internal single brick walls that support the first floor and go all the way up into the loft. The joists in the loft run parallel to these load bearing walls and there is some perpendicular metalwork up there that seems to adequately support the weight of the loft floor (though I'm not sure if it's the tension in the joists that takes some of the weight?).

These brick walls go pretty much up to the height of the pitch and follow it down towards the gutters. The span between the two internal walls is not hugely more than the length of the CWT. Is putting a couple of joist hangers into these walls well above the loft joists and some 6"x2"s on edge a valid way to support a heavy load? I'm worried that the weight may pull the two walls towards each other but I'm having trouble visualising the forces that it will impart on the walls through the joist hangers. Also, I'm talking about bricks within the top several layers of this 2.5 story single brick wall, is drilling into this with a hammer drill likely to shake any of these loose?!

The alternative is just to build a frame off a bunch of the joists (currently spanning 4 or 5 I think) but because of the location of the loft hatch I wanted to see if the above method would provide better support.

I know my description isn't great, and I'll try and take some pictures tomorrow if anyone is willing to offer advice.


Thanks,

Simon

 

[^woody^]

Loads are vertical, and can't pull two walls together. And the mere presence of timbers between walls stops that in any case.

 

[simongii]

Thanks for the response Woody, yep, I can see how the timber would act to push the walls apart.
I have included a couple of photos, the wall on the left is part of a chimney, so looks quite substantial, the one on the right is the top part of the single skin wall. I'm still worried that poking around with my SDS hammer drill to put the joist hangers up might loosen things up a bit....am I being silly?