LVL Support Question

edfromma

I'm having an LVL beam sized to span 15ft in a 2 story cape style home. The beam will replace a load bearing wall between the kitchen and dining room. Durectly under the beam (current wall) is the main support beam running the length of the basement which is supported by steel columns ever 6-8 ft. My question is on the location of the support in the basement on the side cloer to the middle of the house. The end of the beam would be approx 12-18 inches from one of the steel supports but still directly over the main basement support beam.

Id rather not add another steel column in the basement because it will take up living area and berakup the room. Any thoughts/opinions as to being offline by approx 12-18 inches?

Daniel Holzman

You say you are having the LVL beam sized, so I presume that means an engineer, architect or fabricator has examined your framing and is sizing the beam. They should also examine the support of the beam, and prepare details for the support. Being off 18 inches or so from the steel column means that the main beam will be subject to bending moment from the LVL support, which needs to be calculated, and then the designer can determine if the main beam can support the additional bending.

edfromma

i submitted drawaings/diagrams of the house (all floors etc including walls and measurements and roof pitch) to a lumber yard. They are going to have their manufacturer size a beam for me and have and provide an engineer stamp for my inspector. im actually leaning towards installing that additional support in the basemenet anyway to be safe and boxing it in to make it look pretty.

tpolk

they are probably only sizing beam and load not support

edfromma

correct. im leaning towards double 2x10s on each side for support directly under the beam and an additional 4 in steel column directly under the suppor in the baseemnet

Daniel Holzman

I am not quite sure I follow your thread. You are planning to use double 2x10 under the beam. I assume the beam you are referring to is the new LVL. I presume you are planning to use the 2x10 in the vertical orientation as posts, although this is not clear.

I did a similar project, replacing a load bearing wall that spanned about 11'6" between my kitchen and dining room with a steel beam. I have a two story house with attic, so the vertical load on the beam was substantial. By computation, I determined that a pair of tripled 2x4 studs acting as columns on either side of the steel beam were adequate to carry the load down to the main beam in the basement. I also computed that the additional moment on the main beam would not affect the structural capacity of the main beam, so no additional lally column was required.

Each case is of course unique, and typically you need to perform computations to determine the size of the columns required, and whether a new support is necessary for your main beam in the basement. It may be worth hiring an engineer to actually do the calculations, since the cost in time and money of installing a new footing and a new lally column may exceed the cost to hire a professional to look at the overall project.

jlhaslip

also, don't rest the support columns directly onto the main floor subfloor without blocking under the subfloor down to whatever support there is under it. the subfloor will deflect once the weight is on it. it needs to be supported.

just thought i'd toss a reminder in here.

Clutchcargo

to the OP...
What you're doing is adding a point load to the main girder where the posts for the new beam are. This wasn't originally speced for that point load so you would need to follow the load down to a footing in the basement or replace the main girder with a beam that is speced for that load.

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