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I recently moved into a house that has a roof with raised tie trusses and no internal supporting walls. I wanted to use the loft as storage but the small dimensions of the roof ties are concerning for anything other than what nature intended. I have recently also had a survey done on the property to fit a heat pump, but would need the water cylinder to be located in the loft BUT I'm unsure as to what method can be applied to strengthen the roof ties as the wall plate is much lower and not accessible to bear weight and with no internal LB walls this is a 20ft span with nothing to bear against. How are raised tie roof trusses strengthened for a loft conversion? One carpenter mentioned about sistering larger joists and bolting them against the existing rafters with additional struts from rafter to joists along the edges, and another said about lowering all ceilings to implement a wall plate to wall plate span and using RSJs but that is a lot of work for a storage room. Any ideas?

Hello everyone, my first post here. The height of my loft isn’t that high so can’t ever use it as an actual room, but I hoped to make it easier to move about and use it for storage, maybe even a space to play Lego for the kids. So I wondered how easy it would be to change the triangulation of the trusses, I have a couple of photos and drew a line over the ones I was thinking of changing and then showed a photos of an example of how the truss would be vertical instead of at an angle. ( I wouldn’t move the smaller truss just the longer one that eats into the space. what do you guys think? ideally don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. can send more photos and videos if that helps, appreciate your opinion.

I have two MVHR units in different loft spaces. Really kicking myself for not sticking to my original plan that they should all be easily accessible. Anyway, I had to go up there to change the filters and also the PV is playing up and tripping the MBC. That is another story. We have angled trusses above the ceiling joists (see pictures). They run at an angle of roughly 4:10 Thus the depth of the loft insulation is a bit all over the place. In the centre of the loft near the MVHR and inverters it has been trampled down to the 150mm level. At the edges it is between and above the trusses and so it is over 400mm deep. Really I just want to put a couple of metres of board either side of the hatch to access the equipment. These are the areas most trampled. The loft is almost 30m long so it is a tiny percentage of the area. The builders have attached a small board next to the PV and another is just lying next to the MVHR on the slope. I would rather put something flat, it feels like it is quite easy to slip off. What is the best way to do this? Loft legs won't help. Maybe I buy a long piece of timber and try to notch it every 600mm to the angle of the trusses? In the other loft space the joists are flat. However they fitted the ducting too close to the MVHR to change the filters easily. I got them to come back to look and possibly move the ducts only for the guy to almost come through the ceiling. I found that due to the ducting there was only one place the hatch would go. When the builders put it in they clearly found it too difficult to get a frame around all 4 sides, so didn't attach it on the side where the guy tried to stand. I could make them come back and fix it but sometimes for small things like this I just feel like life is too short.

The internal supports in my loft are awkwardly placed and make access difficult. There are two of these inverted A frames about 2m apart. Is there some other arrangement of internal supports that can be constructed to make the space more useable? How would you proceed with a job like this? Obviously having the roof collapse would be a bad thing, so DIY is probably out of the question. Do I need surveyor/architect involvement or is this a straightforward, common task for a competent roofer. Thanks, Matt