Selfsufficientish.com

Is there a builder in the house.
I'm building an older style solar HWS which mounts the main tank on the roof. Thats about a quarter of a tonne on a roof which already holds at least five tonnes of tiles.

I'm building a frame like a heavy table so that the tank doesn't actually mount onto the roof. The table legs go through the tiles and mount onto two internal supporting walls either side of the main passage.

So far so good.

The catch is that I'm not sure if they are actually supporting walls. IN the ceiling wooden coloumbs rise from them to help support the roof but thats about all I can see.


Does anyybody else know a sur e way to pick a supporting wall vs a partition wall.????

( Yes! I am gonna test it first by taking a wheelie bin up there and filling it with water.)

I imagine building practices may vary between the UK and Oz, but this is what I would be looking for here, to suggest a supporting wall: Is it solid (brick or block)? Does it take any roof load? Is it one continuous vertical rise from foundation to top? What sort of foundation is it on? Does it suppost floor joists?

The answers to any single one of these questions is not difinitive, but you may be able to form an opinion based on several of them. Establishing what sort of foundation the walls rest upon can often be near impossible, especially if they are in the middle of the house. A solid wall is a good sign especially if it is two or more storeys high, as is the fact that it takes roof load; this would have added significance if the roof load can be high due to snow or high winds. If you can find any floor joists supported by the walls, I'd suggest you're on a pretty good bet. If other structural loads seem to be avoiding these walls, then maybe not

A quarter of a tonne is not an insignificant load concentrated in one place, but divided between two walls it will halve any point loading, and if the walls are solid, this will be spread along much of their base length. But you are right not to be complacent about this.