How far can I load upstairs floor

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oldbutnotdead

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Another chapter in the House of Pain. Apparently I can't put my proposed 700 litre thermal store where I want to put it (ground floor to the right of the woodburner) cos there isn't enough rise for the thermionic syphon to behave properly. The thing will weigh about 850kg when full and is 600mm diameter. Plan now is to sit it in the bay formed by the chimney breast in the room above- chimney breast is 300 deep, span from side of breast (half brick) to side wall of house (full brick wall) is 1300, joists are 100 year old 7" x 3" at approx 16" centres. Full room span (joists run front to back) is 3800.

Anyone got a ballpark informed guess for what sort of reinforcement I'd need in that area of the floor to take the load (I'll be going the SE route but if the response here indicates I'll need some monster girders then I may well scrap the heat store scheme, payback time is into 10 years already).

TIA
 
no expert
but with about half the load inside the breast and the other half around the edge near the support point you can virtually call it the equivillant perhaps two people stationery [dead load ]in the middle off the room that equates to perhaps one person dancing quite energetically [dynamic/active load]
 
In context, that's about three 2m high hot water cylinders.
A typical timber floor will have a design loading of about 220kgs /m2. That would be in a load sharing situation, and as your's will be concentrated, then it will really need calculation of the bending and shear of those joists under point loading.

If need be, you may be able to span between the two chimney breasts, and the beams should not be too large. But if the supplier wont help work things out then you realy need an engineers site visit and help.
 
Cheers both. woody- that's the sort of estimate I like the sound of, will get onto the pet SE and give him more cash :(. Heating bloke is fine on the heating side but (probably wisely) didn't want to get involved in the structural bit
 
another though
fireplaces tend to have big concrete lumps in the floor and tend to have joists connected to trimmers so may actually be a weak point especially if they where tempted to cut corners
 
big-all said:
another though
fireplaces tend to have big concrete lumps in the floor and tend to have joists connected to trimmers so may actually be a weak point especially if they where tempted to cut corners
Click to expand...
Indeed- I've got the ceiling below down at the moment so can see what's what- the joist nearest the breast is actually sitting on the brickwork above the fireplace in the room below (there's a half brick setback by the look of it). This particular bit of the residence was thrown up in the 20s or 30s (looking at the dates on newspapers stuffed into various orifices) so has some fairly shoddy features.....
 
If the 7" x 3"s are trimmed around the chimney, it's likely that there will be a significant notch cut out of either the trimmed- or trimming joist
or both. If so, there will be considerably increased shear stress at the cut end of the joists. In the absence of pics or a good drawing, no one here could say definitively one way or the other - you do need to get an SE on site.
 
Bilabong007 said:
Is it not possible to pump the water round the system with the original heat store location?

Just a thought

Graeme
Click to expand...
To my mind with an uninterruptible power supply on the pump and control circuits then yes. HETAS engineer says no, must circulate under gravity alone. It's the primary circuit from woodburner that is the problem, rads etc will be pumped wherever the thing ends up
 
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