Taking a wall out

Gilly

Gilly

Gilly

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I want to take out a wall in our kitchen/dining room (well it's a kids play room at the moment) and open it out to a kitchen/diner.

The line of the wall runs opposite to the apex of the roof, which I'm told makes it likely to be non-load bearing. Is that right? If it isn't load bearing does that remove the need for an RSJ?
 
It's brick built plastered over.

All of our internal walls except the one I put in are brick built. Guess it's due to the age of the house? 100+ years.
 
Our walls were brick and not structural, the only way to tell is follow the wall up, is there anything sitting on it, it may pick up the edge of the staircase or something odd like ours did and we had to have flitch beams made just because the original builder didn't double up the joists around the staircase.

Your intermediate floor joists could be sat on it or the upper floor walls could be built on top of it.

If you're not sure and are serious get an engineer in who will lift floor boards and poke around, it should only costs £250 for a report and any steel calculations if they design any sort of beam and you'll probably need the calcs if you sell the place.
 
There is a wall standing above it, nothing like staircase or anything.

I suppose I could look beneath the floorboards and see if the wall continues upwards between floor and ceiling?
 
maccapacca said:
Your intermediate floor joists could be sat on it or the upper floor walls could be built on top of it.
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You never know what tricks/ bodge the old builders got to.:(

That was the problem I encountered, a bedroom wall above,plus there was disused chimney to the side which was also tied in, when I opened up the dinning wall to put in double doorway opening.

Had to put in some serious steelwork, all extra expense, probably in my case been easier to completely remove stack from roof to ground floor, would have got away with just a large lintel then.
 
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Its naughty but

Get a builder in to give a quote for the work. He'll tell you whether its load bearing or not.

Otherwise you could end up with a load of rubble and some poster's saying oops. well we weren't to know. Not much use with a head full of bricks though

Plus if your taking down a wall downstairs that is connected the a wall upstairs. How is that wall supposed to stay up without a lintel
 
Gilly said:
There is a wall standing above it, nothing like staircase or anything.

I suppose I could look beneath the floorboards and see if the wall continues upwards between floor and ceiling?
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Sounds like a structural wall then, its holding up the wall above.
 
When I removed a load bearing internal wall I got building regs involved. Architect calculated the size of the beams and specced fire resistant plasterboard etc.

Gilly said:
That's why I said I'd check between the floor and ceiling, to see if it continued :confused:
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It must continue, they're not going to build the brick wall upstairs on the floor boards.
 
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Simon said:
A 100 year old house will be solid walls from ground up.
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Brick yes

Solid.......erm
We had a crow bar in the edge of our bathroom to push the new boards over whilst fixing and the internal wall was moving about 2 inch each time we applied pressure.

Got to love old houses

All tied in now though
 
mattyg said:
Brick yes

Solid.......erm
We had a crow bar in the edge of our bathroom to push the new boards over whilst fixing and the internal wall was moving about 2 inch each time we applied pressure.

Got to love old houses

All tied in now though
Click to expand...

:D Yeah good point. Mine 1902 and the walls seem Ok, its the roof that needed strengthening
 
For the cost of an engineer I would rather just go ahead and have an RSJ put in anyway. I had an engineer in to work out if we needed a beam, I already knew we would. He wrote up a report, said we needed an RSJ and the builder we got in said without even looking at the engineer report that an RSJ was needed. He even went so far as to say the spec of the beam, the builder actually went with a beam that was stronger then the engineer specified, that was all before I showed home the report.
The morale of this story is I pretty much wasted the £400 on the engineer as the builder had experience enough to know what to go with.
 
That's all ok but does average Joe know what a rsj looks like and what is suitable? Do you just trust the builder? I wouldn't personally trust a builder that's happy to do it.

Also when you come to sell the house a survey could bring up that the house has been altered and they may ask for calculations which you won't have and could potentially lose you a sale.
 
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