How to locate my floor joists and the load bearing wall?

[workhz]

Standard disclaimer. Do stuff at your own risk.

seems to me that you can can see where your joists are in the basement so what’s the question again?

exterior wall, minimal distance to wall and perpendicular to joists. Check those boxes and you’re probably good to go.

 

[brad1970]

My understanding is that the live load limit determines the maximum load spread over the entire floor area. Ie. a 100 square ft floor should be able to comfortably take 4000 lbs.
If it was the other way around then the average human would be in trouble?

You are correct live load is spread over the entire floor area.

 

[Makubex]

This is what my handyman wrote:

Morning. Joists on top of bearing walls are always perpendicular to the the bearing wall. That's what makes them bearing walls. The challenge is if you have 2 bearing wall that intersect perpendicular to each other. Then you don't know which during the wall the builder chose to rest at the choices on. This always o curs where the bearing wall meets the exterior walls, all of which are bearing walls. As long as you don't have bearing walls perpendicular to the main central beam or beams down the center of the house, you can be assured that the joists on top of them are perpendicular to the central beam. You'd have to do some research to find out who the builder or architect of your housing community is. It's not that old so I don't think it should be that hard. If you have a HOA, I'm sure they would know.