Conuit ductile strength/trusses

[MikeMcCoy]

In trying to find space where there appears to be none -- I looked up at my garage trusses and saw about 15 pieces of 1/2" conduit. That would work perfectly and free up a lot of wall space if they will hold a reasonable load of short 3-5 ft lumber. I'd run them through plywood attached to the trusses and ran perpendicular to the trusses (24" on center). I realize reasonable isn't an accurate description of load bearing use but.....

[LarryG]

Half-inch conduit is pretty stiff over a two-foot length. The bottom chords of roof trusses are typically designed for only the (light) dead load of the ceiling finish material, so either the trusses or your plywood gussets would probably fail before the conduit did.

The length of the lumber is less important than how high you stack it. Hard to quantify what would be "reasonable." Six inch high stacks? Probably. Two foot high stacks? No.

If you can, keep the stacks pushed as far toward the sidewalls as you they'll go.

[HarmsWay]

I don't think I'm following you. Are you wanting to store lumber in the attic space? Why use the conduit? If they are engineered trusses they'll be overbuilt a little so I wouldn't worry too much about it if it's just a few boards. You could attach some plywood gussets to strengthen the plates. You could also ask the truss engineer but they'll probably have to say don't do it.

Bob