Torrance Room Additions With a Level Ceiling
Torrance home additions with a wide glass wall to the garden, where a flush beam keeps the ceiling level from the old room right out to the doors.
Will the beam over a wide glass wall hang down into the new room? On a Torrance addition it does not have to. A flush beam sits within the depth of the ceiling framing, so the ceiling runs level from the old room to the glass. A dropped beam is simpler to frame, yet it shows below the ceiling as a band across the opening. The span and the load the engineer calculates decide which one fits.
Flush or dropped
A flush beam carries the ceiling joists on hangers fastened to its sides, so it can be no deeper than the joists themselves. Over a long span, wood of that depth may fall short, and a steel beam or a steel flitch plate bolted between lumber carries more load within the same height. A dropped beam hangs under the joists and can be as deep as the span needs, which helps on very wide openings, but it reads as a soffit across the room. We draw both options with the engineer and show you the ceiling line each one leaves.
Hardware and doors
On a coastal lot, any steel left exposed outside the walls, such as post bases or a beam end under a patio cover, gets hot-dip galvanizing or stainless hardware, because plain steel corrodes quickly near salt water. Steel inside the walls gets a primer coat and stays dry behind the finish. The doors, whether sliders or folding panels, are picked after the beam is sized, since the opening width depends on it. If the parcel turns out to be inside the state coastal zone, its permit may need a coastal sign-off too, which we look up before drawing.
Room Additions in Torrance: what people ask
Yes. Glass width follows the beam, which the engineer sizes from the span and the roof it holds up. Sliders, folding panels and fixed glass can all fill the opening, and a flush beam keeps the ceiling level right up to the doors.
Out adds room at garden level, one step from the patio, at the cost of some yard. Up keeps the garden but loads walls and footings built for one floor, which an engineer reviews first. The parcel's setbacks and the existing structure point to one or the other.
Separately from the new room. The tie-in figure covers the seam where new framing meets old at the roof, the walls and the floor. It grows when the opening into the old house needs a new header or when hidden repairs turn up at the joint.
Room Additions in other cities
More of what we build in Torrance
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