Knocking down a wall: To RSJ or not to RSJ?
 

Hi all,

This is far from a car question but I'm hoping there might be a builder, an architect or an engineer among us to give me a steer.

I'm in the market to get a new kitchen fitted - I want to make the existing space bigger by knocking through a wall to an adjacent dining room.

The thing is, the wall is brick. As is every other internal wall in the downstairs of my house bar my toilet.

I had a well known local kitchen firm (that do the whole job from bricklaying to tiling and plastering) pop over and they pretty much said it's guaranteed that it'll need an RSJ put in without actually doing anything to check. Now I'm sure if I go ahead to quote stage they'll actually try and verify this but in the meantime is there anything I can do myself?

My initial suspicions are that this isn't a load bearing wall.
I believe that the supporting beams of my home go horizontal across my home. The wall in question also goes in this direction as per the below diagram. I believe this because a) it's the shorter distance and that seems logical b) when I checked out the floorboards in my bathroom (that I'm starting to strip out), the screw pattern appears to follow that flow (planning to lift these up at the weekend to verify).

Are there any other things I could do to check it out? Does anyone here have any experience with this sort of thing?

Thanks guys

James

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/m...psg5cqctsn.jpg

Is there a similar wall in the room above it?

Hope you dont mind me putting my two pennerth in. that wall is there for a purpose and it looks like a supporting wall having an identical wall further on.

Rev

It's supporting the external wall.

You can tell the direction of the floor joists by the nail positions in the flooring.
If you have floor boards and not chipboard the joists run the opposite way to the boards.


PS. The shortest direction for the floor joists in your plan is across the dining room.
ie. bearing on those internal walls.

There is not - a much larger room sits above it that takes up the whole kitchen plus about half of the dining room.

You could well be right - I'm not 100% sure whether it's actually taking weight though.

If the beams go in the direction I think they do (horizontal), at most only one beam would actually be resting on it. Of course if they go vertical then it would definitely be taking weight and an RSJ designed by a structural engineer is needed.

I hadn't thought about the external wall at all!

The terms you are using are confusing. ALL joists go horizontal.

Vertical means from floor to ceiling.

There will not be a case of ONE joist resting on a wall. It will be all or nothing.

Mr PB666 Sir.

Precis of my career.
In charge of construction of---------

1/ More than 250 houses.

2/ Shopping centers.

3/ County mansion for the Duke of Somerset.

4/ Blocks of flats just about everywhere.

5/ 3 years in Dartmoor prison on the internal engineering construction of several cell blocks.

6/ Roads and supporting structures as per the Tamar bridge.

7/ Four large retail outlets in the middle of Plymouth.



And Lots and Lots more.-----------------:eek::eek::eek::eek:

When I say vertical/horizontal I meant in relation to the diagram from a birds eye perspective. As in, going from the longest sides of the diagram to the other long side is horizontal.

Quite a resume there fella.
So from a quick squint you're thinking it's gonna need an RSJ?

I know its out of context Colvert but it did make me laugh :D