Removing A Wall On A Hip Roof

The hip roof is the most commonly used roof style in north america after the gabled roof.

Removing a wall on a hip roof.

Go into your basement or crawlspace and look at the alignment of floor joists. A pyramid hip roof is built on a square building with four triangular sides that meet at a point at the top. 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. Watch this video before.

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. A hip roof has four slanted sides unlike a gable roof that is shaped like a tent and has only two sides. A hip roof or a hipped roof is a style of roofing that slopes downwards from all sides to the walls and hence has no vertical sides. 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.

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. A hip roof is a roof in which the roof slopes upward from all four exterior walls to meet at a central ridge. 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. There are no gable ends on a building with a hip roof.

First determine if the wall you want to remove is a load bearing wall meaning it supports the floor above. 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 pyramid hip roof differs from the more common hip roofs that are built on top of.