Due to selling my company, a lot of my computers that I did keep at the office need to come home. I live with my 'rents and I hate having all those computers in my room (especially because of noise) so I'm thinking of putting them all in the loft. Has anyone here done this? Did you have any problems? It's a ~1970s house, would weight be an issue? Any advice/experience appreciated, I would prefer not to have to get builders in I can't really afford it.
watch changing rooms it prolly is possible, whats the loft like, is there just beams and under the beams ceiling i.e. | | | | | | | | | | | | --------------------------------- if so put down MDF (ok maybe not MDF) though don't take my advice seriously cause i'm not being held responsible when you phone claims direct. goto B&Q and ask one of them
pay some one to do a loft conversion. If you lay down large sheets of wood over the cross beams then you can store a lot of stuff up there.
my house is 1985 or newer, and wen tho loft was converted into a room a new floor was built on top of the floor that was there cos it was not strong enough, the roof was reinforced at the sides as well so the beams in the middle could be cut out, even now the floor bouncs wen u walk on it. if u are not using it as a room , just as storage then put chipboard or something over the floor beams and that should do the trick, however u will have to isualate it and make it sealed so it dont get damp on the pc's.
Yeah it can get expensive, my old house was about 120 years old and having the loft converted into a bedroom involved dropping the entire ceiling 10cm. We had windows put in, floor layed, walls insulated and everything full furnished and decorated. I think in the end it cost my parents several thousand pounds.. but it looked mint and added a lot to the value of the property.
I can go up in the loft at the moment and walk around without falling through, but it's just MDF over the joists and some of it isn't boarded at all. The problem is that the bits holding the roof up are in the way making it impossible to put large desks in, they wouldn't fit through the hatch anyway - and there's no window making it very dark and hot. I think I will need to get some professionals in, but I don't want to spend all that money on my mum's house when I will hopefully be leaving soon.
My parents own a 2 bedroom semi in Devon and it was recently valued a £212,000... FOR A TWO BEDROOM house thats pretty rediculous.. I don't think I'll ever be able to afford a house on my current wage and with prices heading the way they are
guess i must be lucky, area i live is right didgy if you get my meaning so wew have some of the cheapest houses in the UK, heck you could buy 2 terreced houses next to each other & have one you live in with some computers & have the other packed full of gaming rigs with network cable running between the houses (think of the money you could make running lan partys ) /me runs offf to check the bank ballance
I'm not sure that would classed as lucky.... Rat tat tatRat tat tatRat tat tatRat tat tatRat tat tat "Whh..what was that" "Just another drive by darling, go back to sleep"
My dad converted our loft himself about 10 years ago, I'll ask him for stuff you have to watch out for, approx cost and stuff, what not to do (so you dont end up falling through the ceiling)
round here you can buy a 2 bedroomed council house for 8 grand. You can't even say its in a bad neighbourhood since they moved everybody out and turned it into fields
the scary thing is i am in a bad area & we did actually have gunshots a couple of months ago but houses are chaep & if you get along with your neightbours your fine (that i di as they paid me to build them up a top of the line pc system, were talking blank cheque job spend as much as you want
main thing with your loft to watch out for is bad flooring, and poor insulation...summer very hot, winter bloody freezin.... if its bad flooring you be wakin up with a couple of holes in your ceiling and some pcs 3m below where they started at.....
I have been thinking of doing the same thing in my house... a lot of it already has cheap flooring in it for storage. Large space but damn hot up there and no easy way to get up there. Several times, Mrs. Dane and I have worked up costs for materials including a window air conditioner. We surrendered and decided to overhaul the den/family room to make it a fun room able to sleep three with surround sound and lan host about 5-6 confortably provided we dispose of the empties *cough* drinking problem *cough* at regular intervals....
Insulation, flooring, weatherproofing, joice strength and I believe for computers, one of the most important items, proper ventillation. I know your weather isn't as bad as it is here (at least I should hope not), but when I was working in attics, the temps in there could reach upwards of 120-125 deg. C. As far as insulation, what type do you have? If your house was built in the 70s, you might unfortunately have blown insulation (loose fibers) if this is the case, you need to made sure that your computer has good filters so as not to get this into your fans/moving parts (most blown insulation is fiberglass shards). as far as flooring, if all you're looking for is a place to put your computers, just run a couple of crossways 2x4s and screw some boards to them as a platform. Use pressboard because plywood (all the way up to 1/2") will warp over time. Depending on how much weight you have running on the boards, just place the crosspieces nearer to each other for more support. the more roof joices you cross, the more distribution you have for the weight. As far as weight limits for the joices, I don't believe you shold need to worry about this, unless you're running a couple of tons of equipment. Well, getting a little long-winded, but hope some of it helps.
Thanks, all your posts have been helpful. I don't just want to use the loft as a place to store computers, I need to be able to work on computers up there too as part of my computer repair business so it needs to be clean, tidy, and a nice bright place to work. I want to do a full conversion, and do what Fatboy said about removing the roof beams in the middle and reinforcing to give me more space. I would love to do it myself but it would be hard I think and my dad is about as much use at DIY as he is at anything else! LOL. Have to save up my pennies for the builders I suppose
