Support under hip rafter. Is this structural?
Gold16
| Posted in General Discussion on
Renovating a kitchen and in the 2×4 hip rafter above there is a 4×4 laying across the 2×4 ceiling joists (no fasteners, just laying there) and a 2×4 nailed to it and then a single nail going into the hip rafter. Just wondering what this is and whether I should secure it or if I can remove it before I put drywall back up. House was built in the late 80’s.
Replies
Looks like a poor attempt to provide mid-span support to an undersized hip rafter by transferring the load down to the ceiling rafters. That is not a great idea and will likely result in a bowed ceiling. The general rule is a hip rafter is one size up- so if the rafters are 2x4 it would be 2x6. This is for strength and also to provide a wider nailing surface for the top cut of the jack rafters.
If you want to make this better my approach would be to temporarily support the jack rafter on one side of the hip with long 2x4’s that sit on floor joists. Then I’d try to pull the nails attaching the rafters to the hip and sawzall/multi tool 1.5” off the rafters using a scrap 2x piece as a guide. When they are all out slip a 2x4 in the slot and sister it to the existing hip rafter. Try to get a nice bearing on the top and bottom cut and nail the jack rafters to it. At that point the hip rafter would be double the strength and the ceiling wouldn’t have the added roof load so your can remove that “support”.