Featured Question for hoarders of books?

Are you cautious on the placement of your bookshelves, piles of books due to their weight? It is my understanding that buildings that house libraries have to be specially designed/engineered with more support due to the immense weight of large quantities of books. Do you take any special precautions in storing your books?

 

I keep them in shelves next to support ( retaining ) walls.

 

Mine are distributed through the house to balance the load.(LOL)

 

No, walls of books in various book cases throughout house.

Debora

 

This is me too. I have enough wall & not enough books to need to have loaded bookcases in the middle of the room, although had a shallow one built for the front hall to hold certain paperbacks, like my collection of The Saint series, to make space in the several living room bookcases for more serious stuff.

 

My den is on a slab; the really heavy stuff is out here. The cookbooks are elsewhere next to a load-bearing outer wall.

 

My books are all over the place. I have to hop, skip and jump to move about in some rooms. I am hopeful many will sell so I can see my floor again. LOL

 

Oh, I have small piles of heavier, oversized books about engraved gems in a number of spots as I would rather have them lie flat than sit upright & at least a couple are too large for even my most capacious bottom shelves, which are already filled anyway. Then there are the books I mean to read next on the windowsill next to the bed. Except I end up chattering here instead of reading, so the add-a-book pile stays put.

 

We live in a bungalow so books can go anywhere!.
My dad used to work at a company who designed their own building. They had limited space so an access road went under part of the building. Guess where they put the library.....
It started to sag and they had to move all the books out very smartly .

 

I’m using the outer edges of my stairs now as the bookcases are full.

 

Bookcases are scattered throughout the house. We have the advantage of 12" thick masonry outer walls and steel support girders in two places in the basement running the breadth of the house. Good thing; I imagine our wide Craftsman bookcase alone is several thousand pounds fully loaded. Plus, we have an upright piano from 1893 which takes 5 20-something men to lift. Love those girders!

 

My extensive personal library is on the second floor of our 19th century farmhouse. Two double-sided sets of shelves are attached to a supporting wall on one end, extending out into the middle of the room. I rigged additional beams from that wall to the opposite wall, above the shelves, then used chains over the beams and attached to the base of of the shelves. Tightened the chains with turn buckles to transfer the weight to the cross beams and relieve the weight on the floor. Haven't fallen through yet, after 25 years. The boxes of books on the stairs are supported with a couple of floor jacks in the basement.
When we bought a double wide ranch house next door to house our used book business, we installed additional beams and posts down the center of each side in the basement.

 

2manybooks: Would you be willing to take a photo of this system you've created? Sounds ingenious.

 

Very interesting solution!

 

OK - with some preliminary disclaimers. Access is somewhat difficult because all remaining space has been taken over by the basket collection (at least they are much lighter). And work that should have been done before the library went in somehow never happened. So there are still the remains of 1960's cheap paneling and acoustic tile on the ceiling (not my doing!), not to mention the 1940s floral linoleum.

The lower batten on the wall is what the shelves are attached to at one end. The higher boards are lag bolted to the wall studs, to provide a foundation for the cross beams which are hung with joist hangers.
The shelves are also home built, with ladder-like frames bolted to 2x4 structures at the bottom. The chains are attached to carriage bolts that go through the upright frames and the 2x4 frames at the bottom.

 

Ah, easier to conceptualize now. Are you an engineer?

Thanks for going to the trouble of taking photos. Looks like you've got some cool books, too!

 

No, not an engineer, though perhaps I would have been well suited. But it was not a career that was feasible for my gender when I was young. I distinctly remember being denied the opportunity to take shop class, and being consigned to "home ec". But I had a father who loved to tinker, and who never dismissed me as a girl. He was happy to have an assistant, and I was eager to learn.

 

Shades of Hereford Cathedral!
.

 

Before they cleaned it up? I remember visiting the cathedral in the late '70s, when I was working at a nearby archeological site. It was a warren of stuff, and I remember thinking I had made quite a discovery when I encountered the World Map squirreled away on one wall. I was disappointed when I returned a few years ago, and found it all empty and orderly - and I did not want to pay an additional donation/fee to see the map in it's new space.

 

@2manybooks - I simply meant the chained library.