Installing Plywood Floor In Attic

We used plywood sheets readily available at lumberyards cut into 2 by 4 foot panels and installed them perpendicularly to the floor joists with a screw gun.

Installing plywood floor in attic.

Start with the attic floor. It isn t but you ll need a dose of common sense to execute the job of installing an attic floor properly. To floor an attic you ll need to install a sub floor for support before laying your plywood floor. If your attic joists won t bear the weight necessary to finish out a living space but the engineer cleared them to support floor decking for light storage you can install inch plywood or.

But if the floor is covered in plywood you can t stuff enough insulation beneath it to do the job sufficiently not even in warm climates. First you ll need to measure the area you want to floor so you can calculate how much wood you ll require. Heat rises so the insulation in your attic is the most important part of your home s insulation. Stop using your attic for storage.

All it needed was flooring to become a place to stash all our stuff. According to the us department of energy your home s attic should have an r 38 insulation valued for homes in the southern part of the. Because the simplest and cheapest way to insulate an attic is to add material to the floor. The previous homeowner may have simply covered the joists with plywood to use the space for storage.

With all these challenges you might start thinking that attic flooring installation is impossible. Before putting the flooring in take a look at your insulation. How to install plywood flooring in an attic. Attics with existing flooring.

The decision regarding the thickness of plywood to use for the subfloor in the attic has a lot to do with how you intend to use the attic and it also depends on the spacing of the ceiling joists. Alternatively your attic may already have some sort of floor but this doesn t necessarily mean you can build rooms. Attic flooring consists of materials as basic as sheets of plywood as well as more elaborate interlocking floor systems. The solid base allows you to store items in the attic as well as to walk.

Here are a few tips to help you and your house get through the attic flooring installation job. You ll have to construct a wooden frame or sub floor with boards 16 inches apart to provide extra support for the floor.