Quote Originally Posted by n8hutch View Post
My span is only 10 feet to the center, I have an approximate 1000 gallon tank up there , even at 8000lbs, that is only 55lbs per square foot with a 12x4 tank... there are plenty of calculators online that will help you determine what you need.

https://www.awc.org/codes-standards/...tware/spancalc

N8: I don't agree with your analysis. If you divided the 8,000 lb load for the entire area of your loft then you would need some way of transferring that load evenly to every joist and uniformly on every joist to make that assumption valid.

For that kind a weight, I would be running at least a 2x10 joists at 16" spacing. But with that kind of weight, I'd be adding extra redundancy beyond the joist calculation and beyond the joists to the entire building framing.