Should I Cover Attic Floor With Plywood

Plywood comes in 4 by 8 foot sheets with thicknesses ranging from 1 4 to 1 1 4 inches.

Should i cover attic floor with plywood. Another option is to skip the plywood flooring altogether and use dimensional lumber. Extreme care should be used when working in an unfloored attic. 7 attach the plywood to the joists with 2 inch wood screws spaced every 12 inches. If your attic joists won t bear the weight necessary to finish out a living space but the engineer cleared them to support floor decking for light storage you can install inch plywood or.

To make the job easier use a circular saw to cut the plywood sheet first into 2 2 8 strips which will be much easier to handle. Plan to pull up the flooring and layer new. Cut the plywood to fit so that each end of the plywood boards lands at the exact center of a floor joist. The national wood flooring association recommends a minimum plywood panel thickness of 7 8 inch for joist spans of 19 2 to 24 inches and a minimum plywood panel thickness of 5 8 inch for joist spans of 16 inches or less.

The recommended thickness of the plywood subfloor is governed by the spacing of the joists. Adding flooring to your attic is a relatively low cost project running about 5 12 per square foot about 190 for a 10 x 10 area if you do it yourself. The thickness that builders use most often for subfloors is 3 4 inch and when they need extra reinforcement. Attic storage might be a good idea but other issues such as insulation joist spacing and intended usage should be taken into consideration.

1 x 6 3 spruce is a step up from pallet quality wood but makes a fine usable floor in an unfinished attic space. Because the simplest and cheapest way to insulate an attic is to add material to the floor. Hiring a contractor to do the job will roughly triple the cost as you have to pay for their time and labor. Plywood flooring thickness is important for proper weight distribution.

Purchase half inch 1 27 cm thick plywood to act as your flooring. But if the floor is covered in plywood you can t stuff enough insulation beneath it to do the job sufficiently not even in warm climates. Start with the attic floor. Measure the plywood and attic door.

You ll need to make sure that the plywood can fit through your attic door. Take the measurements for your subfloor and measure enough plywood so that you can cover the entire frame.