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.

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 is a roof in which the roof slopes upward from all four exterior walls to meet at a central ridge. These are large pieces of lumber going across the house from side to side supporting the floor roof and are generally 16 apart.

A pyramid hip roof differs from the more common hip roofs that are built on top of. 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. Watch this video before. Go into your basement or crawlspace and look at the alignment of floor joists.

There are no gable ends on a building with a hip roof. 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. 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.

However a house with a hip roof structure suggests that all the exterior walls are bearing walls. 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. 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.