Advice on Removing Internal Wall

roxy84

We were going to sell our house but are now just going to change it round a little. We live in a newish build (2003) and are looking at removing the wall between the lounge and dining room, originally there was a double doorway in this wall but the previous owner blocked it up for some unknown reason.
My OH has no patience and took a sledge hammer to the wall on saturday, guessing it wasnt load bearing. The wall is made of breeze blocks, at the moment the oh has just removed the blocks that were in the place of the doorway, above these bricks i think this would be just above the original door frame there is a metal beam, its not solid though looks as if it is just a casing it has lots of little holes in it and you can see breeze blocks inside the actual metal, the metal is sitting on the breeze blocks which are either side of the original dbl doors, it doesnt go across the whole wall just the section where the doors would have been, so maybe just to hold the weight of the bricks so they were not sitting on the door frame.

Are we right in thinking this wall is not load bearing? We cant get to the floor above or joists as we have solid oak floors everywhere.

Would it be possible to take the whole wall out now? Or would we need to put a rsj in.

The beam is about a foot down from the ceiling level, so would it be possible to remove this and make the ceiling flush all the way along or just be best to have a sort of square archway instead.

We cant afford a builder as Im not working due to having my son and im due baby no2 in June so money's a bit tight at the mo. My Oh wants to do the work himself and my brothers a plasterer so he can finish it off.

ormus

if theres no wall above the existing wall then its prob not a load bearing wall.
also the joists should run parallel to the wall.
if in any doubt, stop and get some advice

cannot believe OH started knocking the wall down first!

Canucklehead

Good evening: For helpful advice see http://www.diydoctor.org.uk/projects/load-bearing_walls.htm

HTH

Canucklehead

baldelectrician

If there is metalwork in the wall it is probably there for a purpose

Get some advice, as things may go horribly wrong if the wall is supporting.

'We were going to sell our house but are now just going to change it round a little'

If you are fortunate enough to live in Scotland this work MAY require a building warrant. Phone your local council and check- make sure if you get good news you have things confirmed in writing.
Also the Scottish version of the home information pack hits the street on December 1st 2008
See:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/01/30105839/Q/Video/437
This will include information on building warrant works

MrBear1980

:eek: :eek: :eek:

The first thing you should have done before anything else is determine if this wall is load-bearing. In the first instance this means lifting upstairs floorboards to see which way the joists run in relation to the wall. To be honest though the only way to tell for certain is to have a professional advise you (preferably a structural engineer). Also the idea that if the wall doesn't continue up through the first floor is tosh. The wall only needs to support your 1st floor joists to be load-bearing.

If this wall is load-bearing then you can't just set to it 1 day and knock it out. You need a structural engineer to produce load calculations and specify a suitable RSJ. Building control will need to be notified and they will want to inspect the work (as well as see the calculations). Actually doing the work would not be a DIY job. You can labour to save costs but you need an experienced builder to do the complex stuff such as supporting the upstairs floor and putting in the padstones etc.

We did exactly the same thing as you about 3 months ago. I wrote a post for someone else detailing what we did I will try and dig it up.

Please!! Do this properly and don't cut corners. You may not have a house left at all if you leave things to chance.

MrBear1980

Here's the thread I replied to before:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=711231

If it does turn out to be load-bearing this may be of some use.

One last thing, you say the wall is made of blocks. Are these the nice and light aerated concrete blocks or the older solid b!!!!y heavy ones? I only ask because if it is the solid ones then load-bearing wall or not, bashing them out with a sledge hammer might not be a good idea as you may cause cosmetic or structural damage elsewhere. They should be cut with an angle grinder and then bashed out one by one with a club hammer. We had to do it this way.

adaze

Every opening in a wall would have some kind of lintel (i.e the metal bit you can see) they come in different forms for different purposes and some do look flimsy (but aren't).

If you are just reopening an old double door and you aren't expanding the original hole then the existing lintel is doing all the work and it is unlikely you would need anything else.

If you are doing anything other then head the advice above and do everything you can do to check if it is a load bearing wall. i.e. Have a look under the floor boards upstairs, if the joists are running perpendicular to the wall its probably load bearing, if they are running parrallel probably not. Theres lots of nuggets like this on the DIY doctor site mentioned.

ormus

MrBear1980 wrote: »

Also the idea that if the wall doesn't continue up through the first floor is tosh.

sorry but it isnt tosh, as you put it.
its the first thing to check. its a very quick and simple test.

if it has a wall above then you know there is a problem.
of course, if theres no wall above then it doesnt mean the lower wall is guaranteed to be a non load bearing. but its more likely to be so.
and yes of course, you also need to check the joists.

MrBear1980

sorry but it isnt tosh, as you put it.

Sorry I didn't mean to sound rude when I said that.

My main concern was the OP seems somewhat blase about smashing through a potentially load-bearing wall. She seems more concerned about not taking up her oak floors to have a look and consequently I felt she might look upstairs, see that there is no wall above and continue bashing away on the idea that it's most likely not a structural wall.

pprebble

Hi, only just joined this Forum, so not sure how to post a new question, so I'll tack my similar query on the end of this thread.
I have a breeze block dividing ground floor wall that is at right angles to the 1st floor joists above (so I assume it's load bearing in that respect) unfortunately the builders didn't line up the top of the bloacks with the top of the 1st floor joists and so the 1st floor flooring has a bow in it when they fixed it down. I've removed the floor boards and can see that the top of the blocks are about 2cm above the height of the joists. I was going to remove them, cut them down to the correct height and then replace them, but I can't actually see what purpose they serve as they are simply sticking up between the joists slightly heigher than they should be. Would it hurt to completely remove the blocks in between the joists and then re-lay the floor boards or should I remove them correct the height and replace them.
Any help would be appreciated.