flooring attic for storage

Hello all,

Continuing on from chopping up redundant water tanks, I'm now progressing with flooring the attic area. The self doubt has crept in now with the construction of the roof trusses and the load they could potentially take!! Just using standard chipboard panels that span 3 'joists'/trusses with screws to hold in position but have, so far, only done the centre (Of the W). Now, the 'joist' dimensions are approximately 3 inches by 1.5 whereas the area where the watertanks are is double that at least. This now leads to the question, what could I safely store up there, weight wise, or are is the chipboard heavy enough!!! I'm 16 stone and been crawling around up there so I'm assuming my weight can be safely stored (If the other half had her way!!)?

Any hints, tips or pointers greatfully received. And yes, the area where the water tanks are/were located is probably the safest area.

Harry

As you've had no expert replies, I thought I'd chip in with my experience. I boarded my loft with the same sort of chipboard. It's in a victorian terrace, and the joists are about 4" x 2". I was young and naive and didn't think about load-bearing problems until half-way through the job. I remember reading in the uk.d-i-y archives that my ceiling joists were just about strong enough to hold up the ceiling and that was it.

However in flagrant disregard of all advice I've gradually accumulated quite a lot of weight up there, including a couple of disused kitchen cupboards, one of which is now half-full of books. I've certainly got a lot more up there than I theoretically should have, but the (new) ceilings below have not even cracked.

Having said that, I have put in shelving with hefty brackets fixed to the two party walls to take some heavy stuff to keep weight off the joists.

Mak> Hello all,