Removing A Wall On A Hip Roof

The wall you are wanting to remove is not a bearing wall by looking at the framing in the attic and the roof lines of the house.

Removing a wall on a hip roof.

Structural walls on two story homes with gable roofs are commonly the center wall running parallel with the length of the house and the front and rear walls on the exterior. Go into your basement or crawlspace and look at the alignment of floor joists. The hip roof is the most commonly used roof style in north america after the gabled roof. This style of roofing became popular in the united states during the 18 th century in the early georgian period.

These are large pieces of lumber going across the house from side to side supporting the floor roof and are generally 16 apart. Just to be on the side of caution i would install an 8ft 4x4 directly centered under the splice with lag bolts and remove the vertical. A hip roof or a hipped roof is a style of roofing that slopes downwards from all sides to the walls and hence has no vertical sides. First determine if the wall you want to remove is a load bearing wall meaning it supports the floor above.

A pyramid hip roof is built on a square building with four triangular sides that meet at a point at the top. A hip roof has four slanted sides unlike a gable roof that is shaped like a tent and has only two sides. When you have your eye set on removing a load bearing wall you may be thinking of removing the whole wall to turn two rooms into one or maybe just removing a piece of the wall to widen a doorway or create a pass through between rooms. In hip roof designs all four exterior walls support the ends of roof rafters so all exterior walls bear a weight load from the roof above them.

The exception would be in the case of a hip roof were ceiling joists often change direction at each end of the house and a wall is run crossways to support the inside ends of the joist the ceiling joists appear to change direction directly above one of the walls. However a house with a hip roof structure suggests that all the exterior walls are bearing walls. Watch this video before.