CJE

Thanks Temp, that’s really helpful and makes a lot of sense.

Apologies for the confusion, the drawing was just one adapted to illustrate the issue. Please ignore the ridge beam, this is being dealt with by sitting the ridge beam on 2 steels pillars supported by other small steels. Essentially there are two large steels running parallel, one at the back of the bungalow, and one near the front. In a nutshell, I can’t understand how the steel is supposed to sit on the existing structure of the house, given the absence of a gable end to insert the steel into - property is a bungalow with a pyramid-ish roof (small ridge beam). As far as I can understand, I can only see one option, in that to remove a section of wall plate, and sit it on a bearer plate on top of the internal block work wall. The obvious problem with this is that then all of the existing ceiling joists are in the way, as the steel cuts right across them for the full width of the house. Do people usually cut out a section of these ceiling joists to create a gap to sit the steel into, and somehow tie them back into the steel to reinstate the strength? Given the size of the steel, to have it on the underside of the ceiling would cut into the ceiling height of the ground floor by so much, it wouldn’t be practical. Just want to have a decent understanding before work actually starts, so hope you can help with this query.

Hi all, new to this site, and would be grateful if anyone can help me get my head around a question relating to steelwork for a loft conversion. We’ve had plans drawn up for a loft conversion but haven’t engaged builders yet due to the lockdown. My question relates to how the steel rsj’s will sit in the roof space. Our structural engineer has stated that normally the builder would remove a section of the timber wall plate on the internal cavity wall and sit the steel on a bearer plate on top of the internal cavity wall block work. (We have a detached bungalow, so no gable ends to insert steel into, to then hang floor hoist from) I’m ok up this point, but this is where my understanding stops! I’ve attached a drawing on this post (this is not our drawing, but just one I found online which I’ve sketched over to try and demonstrate my question). My question is, if the wall plate is cut away, the steel will cut across the ceiling timbers which will run in the opposite direction to the steel, so are you meant to cut these timbers out where the steel goes, and then re-fix back into the steel web somehow to give the ceiling its strength back? The only way I can see to do this is to sit the steels well above the wall plate height somehow, but there just isn’t the height due to the slope of the roof, so even with cutting the steels at an angle at the ends to accommodate the slope of the roof, I don’t think this will work. Don’t really want a steel running through the ceiling below, as it will drop the floor below ceiling height. Hope this all makes sense! Any help with answering this would be very gratefully received - I’ve been searching around on the internet trying to find a diagram of how this works, but no luck so far.