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Hello I have a room that we have to insulate. To do it properly, I am thinking of tearing off the drywall. Then the thought hit me that since I'm going to be redrywalling the room, can I also take out the two walls in red? Are they holding up my roof or am I ok to take one or both out?

The room is 20' x 12', the 20' is the cross section below.

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More Dimensions

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Thanks.

bones
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    We'd need to know something about the roof framing. – isherwood Apr 01 '16 at 20:41
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    Can you include photos of the roof structure? Length and depth of the rafters is important information as well. – Tester101 Apr 01 '16 at 20:58
  • I've edited my post to add some more dimensions, hopefully it helps. – bones Apr 01 '16 at 21:16
  • How old is the home? – isherwood Apr 01 '16 at 21:17
  • It was built in 1950 – bones Apr 01 '16 at 21:18
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    We won't know until you tear-off off the drywall and show us some pictures. Rafter wood type, length, width, depth and on what centers? Your climate, and the fasteners or hardware to be used are also considerations. They may not be "load bearing" and yet still be structural. – Mazura Apr 02 '16 at 00:00
  • Thanks. I think I'm going to err on the side of caution and not take them down. I'll just finished off the other crawl space for storage or a play house – bones Apr 02 '16 at 00:37

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Yes......................................................

Let me elaborate... FOR SURE!

Given the picture is accurate and the (large) kneewall hits the joists the kneewall is functionally taking some of the load from the top roofing members and relocating that load to the floor below. You could replace the kneewall with a header of adequate size. But given you keep the same joists framing below you would then have to pick the load of the header at the 2-3 spots that it runs to the first floor and then carry the load to the ground.

We are actually building a large 1000 sq/ft garage right now with the exact same layout of the picture below - I could provide some pics this weekend. We talked to the architect about moving the second floor knee walls close to the edge but we are stuck at about 3.5 fee on each side - so making storage.

If it was a continuous peak to the edge and the kneewall was an actual kneewall (2-3 feet in height) then you may be able to move it. But as the drawing stands and factoring the height, the space from outer walls, and that the joists are on them I am 99.9% sure they are load bearing unless there is a lot of metal involved.

DMoore
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    I'm not so sure. Plenty of attics are open full-width. It depends almost entirely on rafter design. – isherwood Apr 01 '16 at 20:40
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    @isherwood - updated - these are load bearing for sure. – DMoore Apr 01 '16 at 21:06
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    You're probably right, but I stand by my statement. We can't possibly know based on the information given. – isherwood Apr 01 '16 at 21:17
  • Without getting more details about the construction, there's no way to definitively say that those walls are load bearing. Using the dimensions provided, the rafters should be about 12' long (unless my math is wrong, which is a definite possibility). Looking at span tables, 2x8 Doug Fir no. 1 & btr rafters at 24" o.c. spacing, can span more than 14'. So it may be possible that those walls are not bearing. Without the building plans, or much more detail, it's impossible to know for sure. – Tester101 Apr 05 '16 at 18:19
  • @Tester101 - you are are basically saying that 3-4 architects in my area cannot plan two story garages correctly. And from the conversations I have had with the architects it is not about the "load" although that is a factor, it is about the functional stability of the rafters. They might have enough load down but there is nothing keeping them together from horizontal movement. – DMoore Apr 06 '16 at 01:18
  • @DMoore I'm saying that there's many different factors, and not all roof systems are exactly the same. There's no way to know what's going on with this roof, without more detail. – Tester101 Apr 06 '16 at 02:14