What are Joist Hangers ?

Joist hangers are used in construction and designed to anchor wooden beams. Primarily in roofs, decking, floors and ceilings for the purpose of creating a strong, long lasting support. When installed correctly a Joist Hanger will preserve the wood joists to which they are attached, as over time the wood will naturally twist and move. A josit hanger will ensure the wood beams keep a true fitting, ensuring long term strength and rigidity.

Most joist hangers slot over or under the edge of a wooden beam around three sides, and are attached with nails. There is a connecting plate on the joist hanger that is fastened to the surrounding frame. Joist hangers are versatile and are much stronger than using traditional nails or screws alone. They are also easier to fit and relatively cheap given the length of time they will last. Provided all the holes have nails or screws inserted, they provide excellent stability. Joist hangers can also be welded if needed and can be attached to masonry as well as timber.

Joist Hangers

First of all there are two main types of Joist Hanger applications

Timber to Timber
Timber to Masonry

The term Joist Hanger has a wide variety of uses. From a standard Jiffy hanger for light to medium applications to a Heavy Universal hanger to take multiple timbers.

Standard Jiffy Hanger or Cullen KH Hanger (Light Loads)

Standard Jiffy joist hanger, or the Cullen KH hanger, are most of all used for light duty applications such as flat roof joists, floor joist trimming, trimming for roof light windows and floor joist with light loadings.

Long Leg Jiffy Hanger (Heavy Loads)

For floor joists we recommend the Long Leg jiffy joist hanger. The Cullen KHL or a Maxi Hanger, the Cullen MH hanger.
These hangers are used in timber to timber applications due to them having a greater load capacity.

Masonry Hanger Cullen JHI Hanger

The masonry hanger or Cullen JHI Hangers are especially used in Timber to Masonry applications, and can be built into the wall during construction, or the wall or mortar joint can be cut out to install the masonry joist hangers. These are most used between walls where the building in of the timber joist is not possible or not acceptable due to air tightness requirements.

Loft Conversion FloorJoists Cullen KHL Hanger

For loft conversion floor joists, we therefore reccommend the Cullen KHL hanger, which can be wrapped over steel beams or trimmers for maximum strength. We would always reccommend using a galvanised twist nail to fix hangers and all nail holes should be fixed with either a 30mm, 35mm or 40mm nail.
You can fix the hangers with twist nails with the conventional loose twist nails or use a PPN nail gun
Both Paslode and Rawlplug offer a PPN nail which is fired by a Positive Placement Nail Gun[PPN]

Paslode PPN Nails

Rawl Plug PPN Nails

Cullen have a huge range of hangers and we can supply you with a hanger to suit your requirements whether it be to fix light weight decking, loft conversion, masonry built extension or timber frame construction. We are confident that we will have the hanger that you to suit your requirements.

If you need any advice, please feel free to contact us.