Finding the answer to “How tall is a two story house?” is not an easy task, but it is still possible as long as you know the way to make some accurate calculations.So, stop worrying and dive into the following guides to learn the suitable estimate for your 2-story building.
How Tall Is A Two Story House
Before going deep into “How tall is a two story house?”, you should first learn about the height of a standard story. In general, it depends on the ceiling height, typically ranging from 8 feet to 10 feet.
For commercial buildings, the figure can be higher than 10 feet; the average is from 10 to 12 feet tall. Besides, the amount of space above the ceiling and the thickness of the floor are also factors affecting the precise height of a house.
However, the 8 feet traditional ceiling is now no longer suitable. It is because of the development of other amenities, such as air conditioning, home heating, or insulation systems. Instead, residential buildings are usually established with a 9 feet tall design for the first floor.
You can solve the question “How tall is a two story house” by measuring and calculating the additional footage from the depth of the floor (about 1 foot) to the space located above the ceiling ( approximately 2 feet in drop ceiling houses).
What’s more, the attics of different buildings tend to have customized heights to fit specific demands. That being said, there is no existence of a fixed measurement.
In different areas, even with stories in the same building, their height can also differ. Nowadays, given the increasing number of stories in a building, upper stories often have less floor space than the beneath one.
Nevertheless, there are local code requirements that control the maximum and minimum height of buildings.
Other Factors Affect The Height
There are some factors that can affect the height of a 2-story house. We can summarize it into three categories below:
First Floor Ceiling
Before getting to know “How tall is a two story house”, you have to pay attention to the height of your ground floor. In general, builders usually allow additional ceiling height for the first floor (which is about one foot). In other words, the ceiling in the second story must be one foot shorter.
That is reflected for the majority of commercial office buildings and residential buildings. To be more specific, if they have 9 feet first-floor ceilings, the second story will be only 8 feet tall.
Attic Space And Roofline
Whether or not a two-story house has a roofline, together with the height of an attic, will affect the total height. On average, an attic height must be at least 7.5 feet for at least ½ of the floor space so that it can satisfy the requirements of the code.
That offers the reason why you need to ensure that you will thoroughly calculate the thickness of the ceiling materials, which can reduce the final height of the house.
Other than that, the location and dimensions of the rooms also affect the height of a sloped ceiling. For example, bedrooms or living rooms may be designed with sloped roofs.
The Style Of The Roof
Roof types and roof pitch are also key factors to answer “How tall is a two story house”. To be more specific, pitched rooftops increase the total height of buildings up to several feet. On the other hand, flat roofs, which are more commonly used in commercial buildings, will not add extra height.
You can raise the final height of your two story-house by using these roof types: frame roof, gable roof, gambrel roof, mansard roof, and saltbox roof. These can add some extra footage for the house, then make it a bit taller at the top. You may care about the local code requirements, but fortunately, some codes do not account for the pitch break or the top point where two sides of the roof meet.
Check Rapid Restore for more information about roof replacement.
Final Words
That is our answer to the question, “How tall is a two story house?”. It seems to be a difficult and time-consuming task since you have to measure the height of the first-floor ceiling, second-floor ceiling, attic ceiling, and roof pitch.
We hope that you can now gain more knowledge and come up with accurate calculations for the height of your building.
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for our next article. See you then!