my house is 24x36 (one story) i have a 4/12 pitch and 2x4 exterior walls. i'm wondering if i can take down the center wall and open up the one side of my house? the roof trusses are 24ft heel to heel. the middle wall parellel to the 36 ft run lands ontop of my steel beam in the basement. my snow load sometimes in the winter is as much as 3 ft. do the trusses span 24'?

i have one 3'0 opening in the center wall and the header seems to be a single 2x10.

finish carpenter mike

This message has been edited. Last edited by: alfonso77,

Are you sure you have trusses up there? If you do, their ability to span the entire house is best determined by the engineering department of the manufacturer of the trusses. If you don't know who that is, then a structural engineer would have to do some calculations to check their spanning ability. One would have to know the exact size, angle and length of each member of the truss, plus the species and grade of lumber, and the type of connections used.

Trusses can easily span 24 ft, but the fact that they used the 2x10 header tells me that this is a load bearing wall. Non load bearing walls don't have headers, simply because they are expensive and are not needed. This coupled with the fact that it sits directly on top of a steel beam. I'm willing to bet that you are not clear spanning. But like Richard said, best talk to the truss manufacturer or a qualified structural engineer.

A 2x10 header, with a normal 8-foot ceiling, over an opening is a heck of a lot faster and cheaper than framing above the opening with short studs. In a 24-foot wide house, why use trusses if they can't span the entire width? BUT since we don't KNOW whether they were designed to do so, we don't just go yanking a wall out from under them hoping they will span the whole house. We check their capacity to do so, by the means that were stated.

i understand...

i have a garage with the same trusses as my house that do span 24-ft. but im a little skeptical in my house...

i will eventually make a drawing of the truss and have someone look at it.

thank you all...

Richard I'll have to respectfully disagree. Why? Because no one uses "short" studs. Since a interior door is 6'-8", and the roof height is 8'-0", we have less than 16" spacing up there, therefore there isn't any need to put anything there. Go look at any framing job and see that between the cripples of the interior door framing, there isn't anything if the space is less than 16". It's the same accepted spacing for wall studs. My post was a mere observation, more of a "heads up" if you will.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JayinMinnesota,

Fráming jobs I have seen use double 2x10s as a header, even in non-bearing partitions...that's why I said it would not be a reliable indicator of a bearing wall. I guess framing practices are different in different areas.

If the same trusses span 24 feet in the garage, then they probably also span the entire house, if the house is also 24 feet deep. Still, it doesn't hurt to check.