How much weight in a spare room?!

[Gottabesomethingbetterthanthis]

Moving from a ground floor flat into a small two up two down.. hopefully temporarily... but currently we've got about 60 boxes, some pretty heavy with books and stuff (and gawd knows what else we've filled the boxes with!!), hubby says he wants them all to go into the spare room as we don't want to unpack every box until we get our own place but I'm having nightmares about all that weight in just one small room, and having the floor come crashing down... I'm going to tell him the books and really heavy boxes need to stay on the ground floor (basically in the lounge) and we'll just have to make room and put up with boxes all around us. (Wish we'd decided to rent a flat and not a house now...)

But am I worrying over nothing or actually have a point here?

You are worrying unnecessarily!

God I thought it was just me that worried about my spare room floor! Thanks for posting!!

I remember an article in a newspaper about 11 people or 20 people or something being in a room at a party and the floor collapsed and the house builder (a reasonably modern one famous for new builds, forget which) said there were too many people! WTAF!

I imagine how much all my stuff weighs and put it round the perimeter where the wood underneath will be attached to the wall in the hope it will help. It must weigh about five people. Lying at the walls ha ha!

I figure it’s ok, as a double bed with two fat people in it, a chest of drawers and a chair would be expected in a house and it can’t weigh more than that, so if the floor can take that and my crap weighs less….!

how old is the house?

If you can see the floorboards, the joists underneath will be at right-angles to them (observe the nails or screws which will be in lines along the joists). The floor will be strongest where the joists go into the wall.

I have known chipboard floors crack or break under local load. So the leg of a bed or bath can punch a hole through, or the chipboard may crack in front of a sink where people often stand, or at the bottom of a staircase where people step (or jump) down. In these cases the joists are not damaged and I have not seen people fall through, but the chipboard needs replacing (preferably with ply).

Boxes spread the load over the entire base, not like the leg of a bed or the caster on an armchair, so are not likely to cause any trouble. If you are using shelving units or cabinets with tubular or angle legs you could put a piece of 18mm ply under each foot to spread the load. A DIY shed or timber yard might sell you offcuts cheaply. One-foot square would be sufficient but you can use larger if you like.

You may notice that modern kitchen units gave a big foot on the legs now for the same reason.

House is 1930s/1940s and I understand that 'modern' houses should withstand 40lbs per square foot, or 150kg per square metre. Now hubby's on the phone to a friend who's a civil engineer - he says, 'don't worry'.. but do put things around the edges of the walls rather than in the middle (logic).

I can't believe I'm worrying about this.. I mean, what the hell - first time in my life! In a previous house I've had a piano upstairs - didn't consider the weight of that one bit! Must be an age thing!

Still.. I am insisting on heavier boxes stay downstairs, and kinder for the removals guys ;-)

A surveyor once said to me 'I know your sort and your books- just keep most of them downstairs'.
Which only works if you have a concrete floor downstairs, which we did then, but in this house, we mostly don't.......