Loft flooring

[mansea]

Wondering if someone can help please, I want to board the loft, I brought some loft panels standard size, 1220mm length but they are slightly too short by about 2cms to be used on the joists and I don't want to cut them down and waste a load of length. I'm wondering if the spacing is the difference between imperial and metric measurements? Or maybe the joist and rafter spacing is just off standard size?

Anyways how is the best to go about getting the loft boarded? I don’t want to use the legs because headroom is a bit tight, so need to go straight on the joists. Cheers

 

[Mr diy a lot.]

If they are tongue and groove board they don’t need to meet on top of a joist. Just fit them where they fall, screw them into all the joists and do a brickwork type pattern like you would if you were laying a laminate click flooring or similar.

 

[johnny2007]

As above, but if you're worried, just screw a 2x2 alongside the joist that needs 2cm extra.

 

[mansea]

Thanks guys both really great ideas!! I'll do both, let it fall short and screw battens into the joist for a bit of extra support. They are tongue and groove at the sides but not at the top/bottoms which was my worry with about 1.5ft of unsupported board.

Also I went for structural osb loft boards instead of the non structural chipboard, I'm assuming that will give a stronger more supportive base? Its mostly for storage but also will be light foot traffic etc.

Also I did think about building a new sub frame perpendicular to the joists to put the boards onto for purposes of getting a bit more insulation in and having the boards meeting over support, but decided against it due to the extra cost of lumber and extra weight on the ceiling joists... Not going to be storing masses but didn't want to overload the structure of the trusses with burden of unnecessary extra weight if I can help it.

Cheers all