My garage at the moment is completely basic, just a concrete floor, brick walls and a timber roof. It's full of boxes of stuff, a couple of bikes, and well... you know the score. So I've decided to put a ceiling in and floor it so that I can use storage above, and tidy up the ground level for other uses.
The dimensions are basically 4.5m in length, and 2.7m in width. There are three rafters (do you still call them that?) or joists or beams (2 x 4 timbers) traversing the width: the first is about 300mm from the front wall, then a space of 2400mm to the middle timber, and a further 1200mm to the third timber, which sits about 500mm from the rear wall.
I plan to floor all the way from the front wall to the third timber, leaving the 500mm gap to the rear wall across the width of the garage for access.
I think that for safety, I should add or reinforce the existing timbers, so they can then take plywood on top, plus a person or two scrambling about up there, but I can decide which of the following two options I should do:
Option 1: Lay additional 2 x 4 (50 x 100mm) C16 timbers alongside each of the existing beams (sawing them to size) and then run C16 timbers equidistant between those joists (for example eight in total, four between the first and second timbers, then four between the second and third timbers) then lay the plywood on that. This means I can use standard 1.2m and 2.4m timbers and plywood without any sawing, and I think it will give a stiffer floor.
Or:
Option 2: Lay additional 2 x 4 C16 timbers across the width of the garage (say 1m apart) and just lay the ply on that. I would need to cut the timbers and plywood to fit the edges to the timbers.
I should say, there's no chance of this space being used as a room, it will just be storage and 1 max 2 people climbing about to access said storage!
I've also had a bottle of red tonight, and might be overthinking this.
Any thoughts welcome.
Cheers!
Jock
The dimensions are basically 4.5m in length, and 2.7m in width. There are three rafters (do you still call them that?) or joists or beams (2 x 4 timbers) traversing the width: the first is about 300mm from the front wall, then a space of 2400mm to the middle timber, and a further 1200mm to the third timber, which sits about 500mm from the rear wall.
I plan to floor all the way from the front wall to the third timber, leaving the 500mm gap to the rear wall across the width of the garage for access.
I think that for safety, I should add or reinforce the existing timbers, so they can then take plywood on top, plus a person or two scrambling about up there, but I can decide which of the following two options I should do:
Option 1: Lay additional 2 x 4 (50 x 100mm) C16 timbers alongside each of the existing beams (sawing them to size) and then run C16 timbers equidistant between those joists (for example eight in total, four between the first and second timbers, then four between the second and third timbers) then lay the plywood on that. This means I can use standard 1.2m and 2.4m timbers and plywood without any sawing, and I think it will give a stiffer floor.
Or:
Option 2: Lay additional 2 x 4 C16 timbers across the width of the garage (say 1m apart) and just lay the ply on that. I would need to cut the timbers and plywood to fit the edges to the timbers.
I should say, there's no chance of this space being used as a room, it will just be storage and 1 max 2 people climbing about to access said storage!
I've also had a bottle of red tonight, and might be overthinking this.
Any thoughts welcome.
Cheers!
Jock
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