Hip And Valley Roof Load Bearing Walls

Some walls with giant openings and doorways can hold up massive loads.

Hip and valley roof load bearing walls.

The roof lines ridgelines hip lines valley lines gable and eaves overhang lines at the ends of building sections and at junctions provide information regarding the required shape of the roof. Stair well openings are also typically load bearing points. A hip and valley roof may be part of an irregular structure. These walls directly support roof trusses or rafters.

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. Such buildings may have more than four hips in the roofs and they form valleys at the inside corners. Any wall on all floors directly above or parallel to a basement beam typically wood steel i beam or a basement wall must be considered by a layman as directly load bearing. 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.

A load bearing wall is not always easy to identify. It is important to identify the load bearing walls on which the roof trusses will be supported in the following plan view drawings all load bearing walls are shown shaded. This type of roof is also called broken back hip and valley roof because the main hips are intconeected by the rafter of gables on one side and the rafter of the valley on the other. Side walls are primary load bearing walls in simple gable end framing but hip roofs and complex roof lines depend on more than just the side.

Some of that load will be transferred down to wall at the bottom of the hip rafter and some to the ridge the hip is definitely carrying a load and so is the ridge now that its a hip roof it is carrying what has been transferred by the hip rafter. 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. Its not just a frieze block anymore its holding up some weight. There are no gable ends on a building with a hip roof.

Interior load bearing walls may also support the roof as they do in gable roof designs. A bearing wall will run in the same direction as the ridge of your roof.