anyone used these attic sadles?

[RickT Harding]

I am working on finishing my garage I use for a shop and I have a lot of things such as some lumber storage, lighting, etc attached to my joists in the garage. It'll be a ton of pain in the neck work to pull everything down, drywall, and then rehang looking for the joists again.

I saw these attic hooks that seem to let you install a floor around things and I'm wondering if anyone's used these at all? Do they seem to work ok and is there anything else like it that I should also take a look at?

http://www.infiniteattic.com/

If these work out then I figure I should be able to let me hang things, but still give me a surface to lay out insulation on to help seal up the garage.

[David G Baker]

Rick,
I took a look at the site. The saddles look like a good way to create some storage space depending on the ability of your trusses to take the extra weight.
I actually thought about pricing the saddles but it dawned on me that I have 14 inches of blown in insulation in my pole barn attic.
The saddles would have been great in my California house because it had a lot of height and only 6 inches of fiberglass insulation.

[Rob Russell]

I'd check with an engineer before loading up the roof trusses like that. Those trusses are designed for the ceiling load and garage doors, stuff like that. Putting a lot of weight on them could be asking for trouble unless they were designed for it.

[Russ Filtz]

+1, You might have to beef up some trusses to get any decent weight up there. The weight of the system itself is probably not trivial either with all the plywood, etc. I just don't trust these dinky 2x4 trusses they use these days! I like the old 2x6 or 2x8 hand-built trusses we used to use in the old days! Lot of wasted wood with that though I guess.

Although, I've crawled around in the attic over my garage with the 2x4 trusses, and it seemed to hold my weight OK. Not sure about long term though. No bank safes or water beds up there!

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I just don't trust these dinky 2x4 trusses they use these days!

Ditto. Nor do I trust the joinery plates they use.

[Ryan Myers]

Ditto. Nor do I trust the joinery plates they use.

I always wonder about these myself. They must have been engineered very well, because I personally have never heard any failure stories. This is right up there with the mystery of how airplanes are held together primarily with rivets. I know its for flexing of the frame, but I think about it everytime I fly.

Assuming your trusses can handle the load, why not just cleat 2x material to the side of the trusses in the same fashion? Screws and glue will hold just as much as those fancy brackets.

One time I had a contractor whom I was wiring a house for that took a sawzaw and chopped out some the webbing supports and cut through nail plates in his garage attic to install a room. That's the last time I ever did any work for that guy.