carrying capacity of overhead floor trusses in a basement shop

[Roger Feeley]

My current house is my first experience with truss type joists. I'm tall and have always stored stuff overhead between the joists. It seems to me that hanging anything of any weight from the bottom web of the truss is a bad idea because that's just not the way they were designed to bear weight. Would I be right that anything over a few pounds should be hung from the upper web? My idea would be to fasten plywood to the side of the truss going from upper web to lower using glue and screws. Then I can suspend whatever I want from the plywood.

So far about the heaviest things I've hung are a bunch of 4' LED lights and a few clamps. I don't really plan to put a lot more up there but information is power.

Thanks in advance.

[Jim Becker]

I seriously doubt you'll have any issues hanging lights and a few clamps from those trust-joists unless they were seriously under-engineered for your home and even then...you're only talking about a few pounds. Hanging a lumber rack, however, would be a completely different situation...

[Todd Bender]

A quick call to a local truss manufacturer might get you all the answers you need. I've worked with a few in the past and have found them eager to help.

[Doug Garson]

Typically building codes for floor joists (and I assume trusses) are based on deflection not failure so it's likely you would see deflection of the floor above long before you ran any risk of failure. The bottom cord may not be designed for suspended loads but if you tie the bottom cord with the top cord as you described you should be able to support a substantial load.

[Julie Moriarty]

While the upper horizontal member can handle more weight than the bottom, a few pounds won't have any effect on either. When I designed my last house I spec'd 2x4 trusses 24" tall so there would be no columns in the basement. My basement workshop ceiling was open and I put all kinds of stuff up there. I lived in that house 27 years. I can't count how many times I checked on the press plates holding the truss sections together but never did I see even one that wasn't seated properly.

[Bruce Wrenn]

The bottom cord of a truss is designed to hold up a sheet rock ceiling. How much does that weigh

[Richard Jones]

In Virginia, the design live load for your floor is 40 psf, dead load is 10 psf. Your floor trusses would have to do that as a minimum, which I'm sure they do. As stated above, as long as you stay away from obscene amounts of weight, you should be fine. Even then, if you spread out the load as much as possible, quite a bit of weight could be supported without undue stress.