How to hang a hammock chair from drop ceiling?
by
Jill Cuttone
+7
I purchased a hammock chair for my classroom but am having difficulty figuring out how to hang it in my classroom. The room has a drop ceiling. Need some ideas that are inexpensive!
Maybe get some heavy rope and use the tracking from the ceiling tiles.
You can't hang it from the track. It's only aluminum and was not meant to hold a lot of weight!
Yhat would only work for preschool. Youll need to remove yhr tiles and hang it from steel or wood above the track ceiling.
the chair will need to be attached to the framing above the ceiling. you will need to remove the drop ceiling to find the framing and locate where to hang . it would be best to have a professional do this because of liability issues. The school should have a maintenance person that could handle this job. This way the school would be responsible not you if someone would get hurt.
As a teacher myself I had to get permission from the principal to hang something like this and two it is the janitor's job to install that way it is done correctly
I hung a large swing 'from' a drop ceiling by going up into the space above the drop down ceiling and measuring the depth of the space and adding 8". This was the length I used to purchase two 1/2" bolts with a large eye on one end and bought four large washers and six nuts for the other ends (this was two washers and three nuts for each bolt). I then went back up into the attic, drilled two holes in the 2" x 8" roof rafters, laid a long 4"x4" pressure treated 'stud' across 6 of the rafters to spread out the weight that would be on the swing, matched the holes in the 4"x4" with the rafters, marked the drop-down ceiling and put matching holes through it. Then, had a friend (actually a 10-yr-old neighbor boy) push the bolts through the ceiling to me in the attic., I put on one of the nuts then one of the washers on each bolt, pushed the bolts on up through the holes in the rafters and 4"x4", then put a washer on each bolt and screwed two nuts on the ends of each bolt. The two nuts on the end of the bolt has kept the bolts from loosening up over the years and my swing is still level, solid, and strong.
These need to be installed over or into a beam - what is above the ceiling tiles? If not installed properly it will fail and you will have an unhappy principal and angry parents at the very least.
I am sure that permission and maintanence crew is the way to go.
I don't think any part of the ceiling would be sturdy enough to support the weight of a child. However, you can purchase freestanding hammock stands for around $100 on Amazon. Or, if your school has a shop class, maybe they could make one for you!
Whoa, Nelly! It can be done. But...The liability! This is only to be done through the principal and his request to maintenance.
Since it's a school classroom I am going to assume that the ceiling is concrete (building code) and the drop ceiling is suspended from it. You can have the maintenance department install an eye bolt anchored into the concrete with a heavy chain down through a hole in one of the ceiling panels then hang the chair from it. Or have the maintenance department build a stand to hang the chair from.