Depending on the purpose of the attic, different materials are used in its equipment. If it will be used as seasonal, in the summertime for relaxation you can build from a lighter material - wooden beams. And if you plan year-round living in harsher climatic places, you need to do capital, with reliable thermal insulation.
How to build an attic with your own hands: step by step instructions
To build a house, starting from scratch, you need to have certain knowledge, study the step-by-step instructions, which clearly indicate the rules for building your house. The first guide to the construction of the attic is the building plan, which contains all the data on how to build an attic, which can be of several types. This is a construction with a release beyond the walls of the house. Or, which will be equipped in the attic space under the roof.
The first view with the release beyond the front wall requires the creation of a frame on the logs. For this, the logs of the longitudinal beam are produced several meters beyond the borders of the front wall of the house. For the strapping beam, wooden beams with a section of 50 x 150 cm are used. For more reliable fastening of the hanging beams, slopes based on the frame of the supporting wall can be used.
If a brick or a house is made of concrete blocks, then ready-made concrete beams can also be used as a lag or they can be filled with your own hands. To fill the strapping beam, formwork is made of boards with reinforcement with thick reinforcement or a welded reinforcing frame. If the outlet is large (several meters), for additional fastening, support posts are installed from a metal pipe or from finished concrete pillars.
It is possible to build an attic with your own hands on the second or third floor of the building in the old, exploited house, but for this you need to do the reconstruction of the attic space. After the construction of the first floor, the creation of a second level frame with an attic begins. The first step is to install the rafter frame in accordance with the documentation. The second step of the attic device is the installation of the strapping beam.
Rafter system
Third step. There is no difficulty in building an attic. It just needs practical skills. Further construction continues with the installation of longitudinal logs of the ceiling of the room, which are installed on wooden beams and fastened with transverse beams. After mounting the frame, the rafter system is laid.
Rafters are installed with their "heels" on the strapping beam, placed on the longitudinal girders of the ceiling frame and fastened at their ends with carved "paws" and additional fasteners. All connecting places of rafters with lags are strengthened in several ways, with nails and metal corners.
Fourth step. The next question is how to build an attic, will be the process of aligning the bevels of the front wall and strengthening the pediment overhangs with crossbars. As the latter, wooden bars are used.
Waterproofing
Fifth step. To install waterproofing, vapor barrier and insulation, the first layer of battens is nailed to the rafter system and a waterproof layer is installed. Depending on what material will be used for insulation, the distance between the first layer of rails is adjusted to the size of the insulation. After laying the waterproofing, a second layer of battens is applied, a counter-lattice, which will create a ventilation gap between the roofing material and the waterproofing film. A layer of thermal insulation is laid on the inside, covered with a vapor barrier film and rough draft is made.
Vapor barrier and attic insulation
Any roof is insulated from the inside. As it is possible to use different heat-insulating materials. It is best, of course, to use polystyrene and mineral wool insulation bags that are installed in the openings of the rafter system, under the waterproofing layer.
Thermal insulation bags are laid over the entire roof and covered with a vapor barrier film that protects the insulation from indoor vapors. Wooden slats insulation bags are fixed to the rafter system. Cladding with a lining or a wooden board is made on top of the vapor barrier film. If the roof is parallel to the attic walls, then additional polystyrene foam bags can be used for insulation. Thus, the "pie" of the roof of the attic space consists of several layers.
Crate
Sixth step. In how to build a roof under the attic, there are many questions regarding what type of roof it should have: gable or tented. It also depends on the material and the design. The preparatory work for the coating includes lathing, waterproofing and vapor barrier.
The crate is made relative to the coating material. If it is carried out with soft polystyrene or bitumen materials, then a continuous lathing with a board with a cross section of 25 mm is needed. In the case when a metal tile is used for coating, the lining is made of boards or beams with a cross section of 25-30 mm. The step of the crate depends on the size of the sheets used. Usually, the instructions for the roofing material give instructions regarding the distance in the crate. Its step also depends on the slope of the roof slope and the length of the ledge of the sheet outside the first bar.
The steeper the slope, the greater the distance between the battens. It is better to perform it with long bars so that there are fewer joints. The distance between the first cornice and the second board of the crate should be 50 mm less than the rest. The distance between the remaining rails of the coating is 350-450 mm, depending on the profile of the roofing sheet.
Wall insulation
For those who do not know how to build an attic with their own hands, a photo with step-by-step instructions can be useful in the construction of such houses.
Before coating, the cornice strip or brackets are nailed to the lower battens of the battens to which the cornice gutter will be attached. Usually, in small houses, the attic is located directly under the roof. And if accommodation is planned year-round, then of course, you need to take care of reliable insulation of both the roof and walls.
In the photo of the built houses with an attic, you can see that as thermal insulation of the roofing “pie” thermal insulation bags of mineral wool are used, which are laid on the inside of the roof in the openings of the lathing.
The attic room
For small houses, the attic is a good option to expand the living area. In order to make the room suitable for living the whole year, both in summer and in winter, it should be equipped with modern insulation and waterproofing technologies. It is clear that the roof of the house is used as the ceiling of the attic. For this, it is necessary to protect the room from heat or cold, penetrating mainly through it.
For this, modern polymer fibrous insulation materials are used. Thermal insulation packages are installed in the openings between the rafters. If the latter are not deep enough for packages, wooden slats are additionally attached to them. To create a high-quality thermal cushion around the perimeter, the insulation layer must be protected on both sides with a waterproofing and vapor-protective film. Not only how to build an attic with your own hands, the photo makes it possible to understand, but also how to give it a residential look. This will require special materials.
To build an attic, a photo can be a good instruction, but when arranging it, an important element is dry cladding of the room with the use of gypsum boards or chipboard. Using them, you can create not only a stable microclimate, but also provide the room with all kinds of partitions and niches that can be used as a dressing room.
Attic roof
Modern construction has a wide variety of projects of houses, cottages and mansions that go beyond the usual rectangular frames. Many two-, three- and four-story houses can have a polygonal shape. And of course, for an extraordinary house, the same roof is required. In most cases, in a polygonal house, it is built as a multi-slope or a tent. A multi-pitch roof has a more complex structure than a simple two-pitch roof.
The construction of a multi-pitched or tented roof requires both knowledge and skills, since the rafter frame must have a symmetrical proportion, to create which you need to have an idea of attaching each rafter to the main diagonal beams, which create the design of the tent roof, consisting of triangular slopes.
The answer to the question of how to build an attic from a timber with a sloping roof is not difficult to find. Such a design can have a multi-slope or tent-like shape, which, as a rule, has a small angle of inclination, up to 50 degrees.
Sloping roofs have many positive aspects. They can withstand the largest hurricane winds. The only drawback of such structures is the limitation of the attic space. In the construction of a multi-pitched roof, the main elements are angular diagonal rafter beams that divide the plane of the roof into slopes. All other elements are attached to the main diagonal beams, so they must have additional attachment points to both the base and the ridge part.
Roof windows
The construction of the attic has several advantages. With the expansion of living space under one roof in the house increases the number of rooms for living. The entire upper part of the building is also insulated. Most owners build an attic on the entire attic area of the house, which significantly increases the load on its base. Therefore, if the house was designed without it and it is being completed to the already built structure, then for the arrangement it is necessary to use lightweight materials that will not create a large load on the foundation of the building.
How to build an attic so that you can live in the winter? For this, it is best to choose modern materials for both insulation and wall cladding. These are polystyrene foam waterproofing bags and lining. Regarding the arrangement of windows, there are several options.
Skylights can be arranged in the roof itself on an inclined surface and can be performed as cutting superstructure openings. Any window construction uses modern PVC bags or lightweight aluminum structures.
Depending on the size of the rooms, one of them provides a single window from the bright sunny side, which is located between the rafters of the frame of the roof of the building.
If the rafter frame has too narrow openings, then several single-frame opening windows should be installed, which will become not only a light transmission system, but also a ventilation mechanism, with which it will be possible to ventilate the attic rooms both in summer and in winter.