I am renovating my house. I've come to the drywall stage. I would require around 40 sheets of sheetrock to be hung.
Each sheet is 58.8 lb and I'll be buying them together. I'm planning to store them by stacking them on four 2×4's in my living room (on the first floor) , which has a hard-wood floor. That's a total weight of 2352 lbs. Is this safe? Would there be any damage caused by this ?
Best Answer
Building code requirements normally require a minimum of around 30-40 pounds per square foot of live loading capacity for standard residential floors. Assuming they are stacked and laid flat (and the floor was built to code), a 4' by 8' section of floor should be designed bear somewhere between roughly 1000 to 1300 lbs of live loading. Note that this is both the minimum and the average for a uniformly distributed load, so the bearing capacity along the walls will typically be substantially high.
That said - if you have the space, divide it into multiple stacks. 2352 lbs. comes out to 73.5 pounds per square foot. I'll usually stack them up standing against the walls in the rooms they'll be installed in. Less carrying sheets around when you're hanging it, and unless the room is enormous you don't end up with huge piles anywhere.