LoftZone StoreFloor is suitable for almost all lofts, new and old, including cut, purlin and truss-roofed types. It’s frequently fitted in both houses and commercial buildings, and is the only product that has official approval for use in new-build properties in the UK. Your joists (which span across the floor of your loft) will be need to be made of wood and be at least 32mm (1.25″) wide. 

For our 1.2m metal Cross-Beams to fit, your joists should be either 400mm or 600mm apart on average (measured from the centre of each joist to the centre of the next one – not the distance in-between them). This covers the vast majority of UK lofts. Because the Cross-Beams slide along the top of the Tri-Supports, they have a tolerance of 75mm in either direction, which helps if your builder fitted the joists only roughly in the right place! In fact, this is one of the features that makes LoftZone so easy to fit, and much faster than using timber or plastic supports alone. 

A small percentage of UK houses however have joists that are 450mm apart, so for these, we have a specially-designed 1.8m Cross-Beam, and associated kits, which can be purchased from this website.

From a StoreFloor perspective, the height of your joists doesn’t matter, and in most UK houses they are approximately 100mm (4″) or 75mm (3″) tall, which is fine. If yours are shorter than that, then we advise reducing the loading you put on StoreFloor. In the very unusual case that your joists are less than 50mm (2″) tall, then we would not advise using your loft for storage. 

If you are still unsure whether your property is suitable, please contact us on sales@loftzone.com or 01483 600304 and we’ll be happy to advise you.

Yes, tens of thousands of people have fitted StoreFloor into their own homes. The parts are lightweight and sized to easily fit through most loft hatches. They are simply screwed to each other and into the joists. Loft boards to fit on top are a bit heavier, typically 5kg each, but are still an easy DIY job. You can see our installation guide or watch videos of other people’s installs. Note: to fit StoreFloor, we recommend the use of an electric cordless screwdriver.

Nonetheless, if you would like someone else to fit this for you, then you can find your nearest installer by entering your postcode into the field at the bottom of this page. 

Yes – you can find your nearest LoftZone installers by entering your postcode in the section at the bottom of this page. 

The StoreFloor Cross-Beams are 1150mm (about 45″) long. They span over 3 or 4 joists (depending on your building’s joist separation) and have an easy sliding adjustment, in case your joists are not spaced regularly (most aren’t!). The Cross-Beams rest on top of the Tri-Supports, where they can butt up against each other, or be positioned a few inches apart.

The StoreFloor Tri-Support and Uni-Support are both 279mm (about 11″) tall, and rest on the top of the joists. This is sized to allow the full depth of modern insulation levels plus an air gap above the insulation and below the boards. This air-gap is there to allow ventilation, to remove any possible moisture build-up on the underside of the boards. Beware any products which don’t provide this essential air-gap!

We sell a variety of tongue and groove chipboard flooring, all 1220mm long and 18mm thick, but of different widths to suit your needs. You can find all our products on our shop. 

The StoreFloor parts have been designed to be very strong but also very light. The 1.2m Cross-Beams weight around 1.2kg, the Tri-Supports around 250g and the Uni-Supports around 100g. Hence, the structure to raise a floor of 13m2 (a Medium kit, out best seller) weighs only 33kg, or 2.5kg per square metre. 

StoreFloor Compact is even lighter, the Compact-Supports are only 178g each and the 1.2m Compact Cross-Beams are under 1kg.

Boards are heavier and you can see the weight of each type of board on their listing in our shop. For example, standard 18mm thick chipboard is about 13kg per square metre.  

Most people would like to board their whole loft, but you don’t have to. StoreFloor is modular so you can start small and build more later when your storage requirements go up. Most people choose a square or rectangular deck, or an L or T shape near the hatch. Some people have more than one deck, on either side of the hatch. Don’t board right up to the eaves though, as you’ll want to keep a gap there for ventilation.

You can see lots of example of photos and videos via the “StoreFloor Photos and Videos” section of this FAQs page. 

No. StoreFloor is built up in sections, 1 square metre at a time. So you can build part of your deck – on one side of the hatch for example – and then transfer your possessions on to your new deck before creating the next part of your StoreFloor.

We sell a number of standard-sized kits, from 3m2 (32 sq. ft.) to 52m2 (576 sq. ft.). If you’d like to build a floor that isn’t one of these sizes, then we have a handy configurator tool on our shop’s entries for StoreFloor and StoreFloor Compact, which you can use to work out the precise number of parts you need, and buy those individually. Note that we measure decks in multiples of 1.2m in each direction, as that is approximately the length of our regular Cross-Beams and of standard loft boards. If you’d like to build a deck that isn’t an exact multiple of 1.2m, then that’s possible; we’d recommend you buy enough parts for the next 1.2m up, and then cut the beams and/or boards to suit.

If you’re unsure what you need, then please contact us on sales@loftzone.co.uk or 01483 600304 with your measurements and we will work it out for you.

The StoreFloor system (NOT StoreFloor Compact  – see below for info on that) consists of the industrial-grade recycled plastic Tri-Supports (the triangular parts), the galvanised steel Cross-Beams and the industrial-grade recycled plastic Uni-Supports (the vertical legs). The purpose of the Uni-Supports is to spread the load across more joists and to provide extra stiffness to the whole deck. 

We provide one Uni-Support for every two Cross-Beams in our StoreFloor kits, which is enough for most people. It’s usual to place the Uni-Supports evenly underneath the deck, or you can concentrate them in the area which is likely to get the most loading or footfall. For storage of up to 25kg per square metre and infrequent access by one person, this number of Uni-Supports is sufficient and most of our customers do not order any more.

If you wish to have a higher load on the deck, or walk upon it frequently, then we advise one Uni-Support fixed under every Cross-Beam, to provide additional stiffness and to spread the load. Additional Uni-Supports are available to buy from our website. You can see the installation instructions for StoreFloor here. 

With StoreFloor Compact, there is only one plastic part: the industrial-grade recycled plastic Compact-Support. This can be used in the same way that both a Tri- and Uni-Support would be used in a StoreFloor kit, by rotating them. You can see a photo of a rotated Compact-Support on our StoreFloor Compact installation instructions page.

Our shorter (159mm or 6″ tall) StoreFloor Compact system consists of the recycled plastic Compact-Supports (the triangular parts) and the galvanised steel Compact Cross-Beams. One Compact-Support holds up each end of every Cross-Beam. Note that if you are buying our regular (279mm or 11″ tall) StoreFloor system, then this FAQ does not apply to you; there are no Compact-Supports in the regular StoreFloor kits. 

We provide one additional Compact-Support for every second Cross-Beam in our StoreFloor Compact kits, to be fixed underneath the middle of the Cross-Beams. These stiffen up the deck and spread the load on to more joists. There is no fixed rule of where to put these, but it’s usual to place these extra Compact-Supports evenly underneath the deck, or you can concentrate them in the area which is likely to get the most loading. For storage of up to 25kg per square metre and infrequent access by one person, this number of Compact-Supports is sufficient and most of our customers do not order any more.

If you wish to have a higher load on the deck, or walk upon it frequently, then we advise one Compact-Support fixed under every Cross-Beam, to provide additional stiffness and to spread the load. Additional Compact-Supports are available to buy from our website. You can see the installation instructions for StoreFloor Compact on our StoreFloor Compact installation instructions page.

If you buy a StoreFloor or StoreFloor Compact kit, then we provide enough screws in that kit for all the plastic and metal parts to be fixed together. They come in boxes of 200 so there are usually plenty left over!

If you however buy the parts separately, then you will need to purchase the screws separately too. And if you buy loft boards, then the boards don’t come with screws either. We sell top quality 4x40mm wood screws in boxes of 200, and they are suitable for both applications.

As a general rule of thumb:

• you need two screws for each Cross-Beam, Tri-Support, Uni-Support or Compact-Support,
• each loft board needs a minimum of three screws each, though you may choose to use up to six screws per board for added strength if you wish.

You can find the screws we sell here. 

The Tri-Supports, by their triangular design, overhang the joist in each direction. Sometimes, e.g near the hatch or a wall, this isn’t wanted. So in these cases, we’d recommend putting a Uni-Support at the end of the row of beams. But make sure that you put a Tri-Support on the next-nearest joist, as this is the main load-bearing part. There is a photo of this here. 

Loft boards in the UK (including the ones we supply) are rectangular, with a tongue-and-groove along each long edge, so that you can slot one board into the one next to it, for added strength. In addition to this, before LoftZone was invented, people used to stagger the boards when they laid them, so that each board ended half way along the long edges of the two boards next to it. 

The physics of this is that joists can be unevenly spaced in a loft, and if the short end of a board doesn’t rest on a joist, it doesn’t have a tongue-and-groove on that end, so could sag if someone stepped on it. The risk of this happening justifies the extra effort of cutting boards at the ends of each row.

But this is not an issue with StoreFloor, since we recommend that you place our steel Cross-Beams 610mm apart (for loft boards that are 1220mm long) so that they do indeed screw into a Cross-Beam and are supported by it, and there is no risk of the ends of the boards sagging.

Hence there is no benefit in staggering loft boards when you use LoftZone StoreFloor, and most people choose to avoid going to the extra effort of cutting boards in half and doing so, unless you are using one of our kits which are 1.8m wide, in which case you have to anyway, since loft boards are only around 1.2m long.

StoreFloor is indeed sometimes used for access, e.g. to create walkways or crawling spaces above the insulation for people who need to maintain boilers, water tanks, solar inverters, MVHR or aircon units, etc. You can see a photo a very long access walkway being built in a school on our Flickr page, and builders also fit it into new houses, too. The usual usual minimum width of the walkway is 1.2m (the width of standard loft boards).

However if your walkway is only going to be one board wide, then please note the following: The LoftZone plastic supports provide super-strong vertical strength. One of the design requirements of StoreFloor was to minimise parts, in order to speed up installation, and this was achieved by using the interlocking boards of a normal StoreFloor deck to provide the lateral stability. For any deck that is at least two loft boards wide, then it is very rigid horizontally (laterally) too, but in the rare case (and only in this case) of if you’re only going to use one board’s width then that board will not have another board to push up against and so there may be a small amount of lateral instability. The deck won’t topple over, unless the lateral force was strong enough to rip all the screws out (!), but it may have a little “wobble”. This is easily fixed, either by having a wider walkway, or if you don’t want that, then we recommend that you use extra sections of timber to brace the deck to the joists from time to time.

We don’t recommend that you use StoreFloor to support a water tank, for the following reasons:

• A major consideration for water tanks is that they must not be allowed to freeze and burst. As such, it’s usual to not insulate underneath them, as you actually want the heat to rise from the room below, to keep the tank warm in the winter. So in this case you don’t need StoreFloor in this section of your loft as you don’t need the insulation there. 
• StoreFloor is very strong but the joists it is screwed on to usually are not. Normally, standard loft joists are not designed to take the weight of a water tank and they usually have to be specially strengthened in the area of the tank. Moreover the boarding used should be marine-grade wood (not chipboard), so that any leakage does not cause the timber to rot. 

The Supreme loft boards that we sell are moisture-resistant but the others are not. However, if you have a damp issue in your loft then this could affect the whole timber structure so we would recommend that you solve the damp problem before fitting any boards. 

For more general information about loft boards, please see our page on which boards to choose. 

LoftZone StoreFloor and StoreFloor Compact have been fitted into thousands of Victorian, Edwardian and even Georgian houses, and many of our reviews and case studies are from such homeowners. However there are a few extra things that you should look out for when installing in an older house.

Firstly, are your joists evenly spaced? In most new houses, joists are 400mm or 600mm apart (measured from the centre of one joist to the centre of the next one – not the distance between the joists), and our Cross-Beams that span 1.2m are designed perfectly for them. In some older houses, the joists are 450mm apart, in which case our 1.8m Cross-Beams are ideal. But some older houses have inconsistent joist spacings, and for them, there is never going to be one Cross-Beam length that will fit perfectly between every joist, so sometimes you will have to cut the beams to size where needed, so that they always end on top of our plastic supports. If your loft has lots of variably-spaced joists, then we’d recommend that you choose the 1.8m Cross-Beams, to minimise cutting, and that you have a saw available.

Secondly, are any of your joists warped, or twisted? In some older houses, the joists don’t lie flat on the floor of the loft, but can be warped or twisted. If you only have a few such joists, then the easiest thing to do is to simply miss them out, by spanning over them. That’s one of the benefits and design advantages of the StoreFloor products over any other system, you can simply miss out such joists, by clever planning of where to place supports and Cross-Beams. An alternative is to create noggins alongside the problem joists; these are additional pieces of wood that you screw into the joist, so that you have something flat to fix the supports on to.

Thirdly, are any of your joists higher than the others? Again this is occasionally a problem in older houses, some joists are taller than others, either because they have moved over time or because the original timber used wasn’t the same for every joist. Again, if this only happens occasionally, the best thing to do is to miss out these joists altogether, by spanning over them. If this isn’t practical however, then you will need to use shims (small plastic shims are easy to buy online) to raise up the deck so that everything is flat. You can either place the shims on to the joists, underneath the plastic supports, or you can place them on top of the plastic supports and underneath the metal Cross-Beams.

Fourthly, older lofts can sometimes be quite cramped, and with low headroom. If that’s the case for you, you may want to consider using our smaller StoreFloor Compact product, which raises the deck 159mm above your joists. Also, if you don’t have the space to slide the metal Cross-Beams on to the plastic supports in a cramped loft, remember that it is also possible to create them as a sub-assembly with the parts inside the beams, and then lift the whole set into position together.

If you do think that your older loft has any of these issues, then we recommend that you buy a few parts to start with, to see how they will fit, to see if you need the 1.2m or 1.8m Cross-Beams, and to see whether you need to fit any noggins. Alternatively, if you are in a hurry to complete the job, then you may want to buy a bigger kit than you need, so that you have all the parts to hand, and then simply return those parts that you don’t use, for a full refund (you just need to pay the return postage).

Finally, please don’t be put off by all of the above! What we have written is a list of possible issues that you might encounter in an older loft, most people don’t have these issues or if they do, it’s only occasionally and you can usually find an easy fix, perhaps by simply spanning over a problem joist or two.