Weight concerns for ceiling cover-up

[Rich_S]

My wife has a "vision" for our home, a 10-year-old Champion 28' x 56'. GOing for a rustic look, iy involves re-doing most of the interior in 6" toungue-and-groove pine paneling. My plan is to install it over the existing 3/8" drywall in most places, unless we've already removed the drywall due to other remodeling.

My question is, how concerned do I have to be about the weight of the pine on the ceilings? Unlike drywall, I'm not worried about the 3/4" pine sagging, but I'm concerned about the added weight on the roof structure.

I've seen some online articles that seem to describe installing 1/2" drywall on furring strips over existing ceilings, and I suspect the pine might actually be lighter than 1/2' drywall, but I'm not sure about that.

I suppose we could get a similar look using 1/4" pine bead board, but that involves a lot of furring, and hassle end-mating the short pieces of paneling. Putting up 12' continuous lengths of 3/4 pine, nailed directly into the joists sounds easier to me (and a good way to make sure we never see the textured ceiling again) provided the roof can take it.

How concerned should I be about the weight of the pine paneling?

[Greg]

Hi & welcome. I'm glad to see that you are aware of the weight issue. Since I have no idea of what is up there for support I would go with the lightest possible. Wainscoting would be the lightest but also the most costly.

1x T&G pine may be OK. I would guess it's pushing the limit, If snow load on the roof is a factor in your area I would do some serious research to find out for sure what you have for support.

I would NEVER condone adding a full 1/2" drywall sheet over existing ceilings. When I redo a ceiling I remove the old and only use 3/8" drywall.

Greg

[Rich_S]

I took a look up in the ceiling cavity through a abandoned duct hole. The structure up there is pre-fab trusses of 2x2 lumber on 16" centers. I know that doesn't really tell us much...

How does one go about figuring out this sort of thing? I'm pretty sure contacting the manufacturer won't help; they'll just give me the standard "we don't recommend making any modifications" boilerplate (written by the legal department, not engineering).

[DCDiva]

I would check with an engineer--we bought a 12 x48 that they had replaced the ceiling with reg 1/2drywall and it caused all the ceilings to bow and leak,when we removed the drywall you could see the roof raise back up and we ended up replacing the entire ceiling due to broken trusses and very weak trusses--the 2x2 trusses are just not strong enough for any thing extra---I do not understand why they do not use a regular truss set up with 2x4--the cost and weight difference is very little --this would solve so many issues with a mobile home and double wides--I honestly thought double wides used 2x4 trusses--maybe just paint the ceiling to be safe