Wood Storage Loft.

I guess this is not technically a woodworking project per se, but I think this is probably the appropriate forum.

Back in February I bought about 550bf of graded select cherry. The actual load from my rough measurement is about 800bf ( The load size is tightly stacked and is 27” x 46” by 8’ ) and it includes portions that didn’t pass for select such as sapwood and bark.

Using a lumber weight calculator I estimate that this is about 2200 pounds.

My garage has an unusual ceiling arrangement. I have 12’ ceilings in my family room which butts up to the garage, and so this feature is carried out into the garage for the first 8’, the remaining 12’ are a more traditional 8’ high.

My wife’s uncle, a retired home builder forman/supervisor, took a look at the construction and made a determination that there is sufficent load bearing members in the right places such that I should be able to rig up a truss that would span the 8’ width of the portion of the garage that has 12’ ceilings giving me a 4’ high by 8’ wide place to store lumber.

We discussed it further and thought that galv piping in the 2” range spaced every 16” like studs would be sufficent to support the weight in theory. I am looking to store most of the cherry up there plus some other wood, so I figure about 2500 pounds.

If I installed 8 2” galv pipes between the two walls every 16” the weight load per pipe would be in the neighborhood of 300#.

Can anyone give me some insight on the load bearing capabilities of galv piping? Do you think it is unreasonable to expect an 8’ span of 2” pipe to support 300# of load?

Thanks a heap.