Finishing An Attic With Trusses

If you ve measured your attic space and feel you have enough room to accommodate living space chances are you have rafters or you have special trusses called attic trusses which create a large open space under the peak of the roof.

Finishing an attic with trusses.

The sad fact is your builder could have installed attic trusses over this garage for just slightly more than what the existing trusses cost. Roofs in standard wood frame houses are framed with traditional rafters or with roof trusses. This framing style typically provides the most open space in an attic. Newer truss framed roofs are made with prefabricated trusses.

Attic conversions are now possible by replacing the truss rafters with a shaped trusses or horizontal beams which in return create additional space. Look at this photo of the space created by attic trusses at my home. The lyons used a web of 16 inch deep engineered trusses to accommodate wiring plumbing and ductwork then topped the plywood subfloor with oak or tile. By contrast conventional trusses have supports called webbing that zigzag through the attic space.

Create a framing overviewto see the results so far. If the roof slope is steeper than 9 inches in 12 inches of run it doesn t take much width to end up with a nice room 12 feet wide with an 8 foot ceiling. If you have this type of roof framing you cannot finish your. The role of the horizontal beam is to tie the truss together and carry the load that would otherwise be sustained by the support and vertical timber also known as the king post.

Attic trusses have a rectangular shape inside each truss. I have this above my own garage. Traditional stick framed roofs are composed of rafters running from the ridge at the roof peak down to the walls. Select the roof truss and click the open objectedit button.