Maxtork
Well-known member
Hi All,
Years ago I built my 20 x 40 shop here in North Alabama. It has worked out well but now I have some new requirements and I'm looking at tearing the roof off and building an apartment above the shop for my daughter and new grandbaby. My plan is to add a ledger board around the top of the wall all along the inside and hang I-joists so the top of the joist is flush with the top of the 10 ft wall. I can do this while the current roof is still installed and I may even have enough room to put the decking on it before tearing off the scissor trusses and existing gable roof. Once the old roof is off (I'll try to salvage the trusses and sell them) I want to build a gambrel roof sitting on top of the existing wall.
So I can use prefab Gambrel trusses but I don't care for the limited space they allow. I talked to a metal truss manufacturer and they are working on a quote for pole barn style trusses with legs that will go all the way down to the concrete slab. This should work but might be a little odd as it would be a gambrel pole barn sitting inside/above a stick built shop. I have already scaled out the roof pitches I want and the chord dimensions, and building the trusses myself is not a problem. I have seen tons of people make their own gambrel trusses for sheds like the picture attached using 2x lumber with gussets in the corners. That seems to work great for 10, 12 or even 16 ft widths on a shed but I would like to do something similar for my 20 ft width. Each chord is less than 8 ft so lumber is easy as is the gusset plates. I just don't know if even 2x8s are enough. I even thought of doing the same thing with I-joists cut and joined the same way to get a deeper web without as much weight. Has anyone seen this before or have any insight on this as a possibility? If it was just my garage full of junk residing in it I would probably just try it and see how it goes but since the kids are gonna live in it, I'm not so brave.
What do you think?
Max
Years ago I built my 20 x 40 shop here in North Alabama. It has worked out well but now I have some new requirements and I'm looking at tearing the roof off and building an apartment above the shop for my daughter and new grandbaby. My plan is to add a ledger board around the top of the wall all along the inside and hang I-joists so the top of the joist is flush with the top of the 10 ft wall. I can do this while the current roof is still installed and I may even have enough room to put the decking on it before tearing off the scissor trusses and existing gable roof. Once the old roof is off (I'll try to salvage the trusses and sell them) I want to build a gambrel roof sitting on top of the existing wall.
So I can use prefab Gambrel trusses but I don't care for the limited space they allow. I talked to a metal truss manufacturer and they are working on a quote for pole barn style trusses with legs that will go all the way down to the concrete slab. This should work but might be a little odd as it would be a gambrel pole barn sitting inside/above a stick built shop. I have already scaled out the roof pitches I want and the chord dimensions, and building the trusses myself is not a problem. I have seen tons of people make their own gambrel trusses for sheds like the picture attached using 2x lumber with gussets in the corners. That seems to work great for 10, 12 or even 16 ft widths on a shed but I would like to do something similar for my 20 ft width. Each chord is less than 8 ft so lumber is easy as is the gusset plates. I just don't know if even 2x8s are enough. I even thought of doing the same thing with I-joists cut and joined the same way to get a deeper web without as much weight. Has anyone seen this before or have any insight on this as a possibility? If it was just my garage full of junk residing in it I would probably just try it and see how it goes but since the kids are gonna live in it, I'm not so brave.
What do you think?
Max
