How much weight can a floor withstand?

[Daniel_N]

I live in an apartment in a building constructed in the 1950s. I wonder if there is a way to find out how much weight the floor in my apartment can withstand? How many heavy items can I have, basically?

I assume there are a lot of factors that influence this, however, I don't have much knowledge myself, so please ask for specific information.

At any rate, it's concrete flooring, I don't know how thick.

//daniel

 

[Swetrot]

In Sweden, we have quite a few aquarists who without any trouble set up 500-1000 liters of water spread over one or a couple of square meters, without houses starting to collapse in any significant way.

A well-stocked bookshelf with thick encyclopedias weighs a fair amount too, and waterbeds don't crash through the floor either. Pianos are usually not a problem; you might need to tinker a bit to get them to stand level.

As long as what you place on the floor is relatively still, I would say you can put whatever you want on your floors. However, if you're going to have a "stångjärnshammare" or something similar that causes vibrations, then there's some reason to start looking over the constructions.

 

[Daniel_N]

In Sweden, we have quite a few aquarists who have no problem setting up 500-1000l of water distributed over a couple of square meters, without houses collapsing in any significant way.

A well-filled bookshelf with thick encyclopedias weighs quite a bit too, and waterbeds don't crash through the floor either. Pianos are usually not a problem; you might have to do a bit of tinkering to get them to stand level.

As long as what you place on the floor is reasonably still, I would say you can place whatever you want on your floors. However, if you're going to have a "stångjärnshammare" or similar that causes vibrations, then there's some reason to start looking over the constructions.

Thanks for your response Swetrot! So far, I've managed to avoid "stångjärnshammare" However, there are starting to be quite a few metal cabinets with hand tools, table/miter/saws, a compressor, lots of screws and bolts, power tools, etc., and roughly estimated, I suspect I'm over 1000kg on about 9 square meters... hmm, need to get a scale and calculate more accurately.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm soon moving in yet another small metal cabinet that weighs about 50 kilos, which is why I started seriously considering the risk of the floor collapsing...

 

[Swetrot]

1000kg is a piece of kaka for a room. Imagine Christmas dinner with the TJOCKA family. We easily have 2 tons sitting around the table on Christmas Eve. And then there's dancing around the Christmas tree...