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Need help with load bearing wall removal...

2224 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  Huggins90
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So I have engineers drawing up a plan. However, the first thing they said to me was..."I'm not sure you're going to be able to remove that. I just don't see how." Umm...you are a structural engineer are you not? Problem solve! So eventually he suggested some beam options claiming it needed to be steel, which I disagree with. Then he said, well yea we could probably do LVL. So long story short, I felt like I had to exert extra effort just to get him to think outside the box and give me some options. Needless to say, I did some thinking on my own after he left.

I drew up a few figures on what my situation looks like. Look at previous pictures to see the situation in person. There is the one wall in the center of the room, the wall in question. I have built two new walls on either side approximately cutting the room into fourths. From one new wall to the other is 15'. The ceiling joists are 2x8s running from one exterior wall to the middle wall doubling over in the middle. It was formerly a flat roof, now it has a gable built over it. Instead of running a beam perpendicular and trying to fasten joists to it, could you not run new 16' 2x8s sistered onto each joist from one new wall to the other? The only problem I see with this is a bit of a sag in the middle due to the roofers framing their supports down onto the middle wall making it load bearing. But as far as just holding up the ceiling weight, 2x8s can span 15' yes? So then as far as taking care of the sag, could you run a beam alongside the middle of the roof supports coming down onto the wall, maybe a 2x12 or 2x14 on each side of the 2x6 supports sadwiching them together with the 2x6 in between and lag bolt them so that the beam is carrying most, if not all, of the roof support weight, thereby eliminating the extra load on the joists enabling them to be carrying ONLY the ceiling weight, (no storage on top). Thanks so much. This site is awesome.

-Huggins90

P.S. In first drawing, highlighted wall is the wall to be removed, green dotted lines represent pier and beam locations or foundation walls. If you need me to explain anything else let me know. Anxious to here everyone's thoughts.

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Are you saying the new roof sits directly on top of that wall?
I see several options on this, First of all is the basics of building 2 temp walls on each side.
Now if the new roof is sitting right on that wall you want yo remove, You need to go up in the attic and build 2 more temp walls right on top of the ones below., A little more tricky because of the angle of the roof, But just temporary to support the roof while you cut out the wall.

At this point, you need to know what size beam you need to support the weight.
And get the lvm or whatever you will use to make the beam on site And measure it.
And maybe before remove the wall below, go up in the attic and cut the braces for the roof at correct hight., add a new bottom plate to the braces.
Now go down stairs and cut the 2x8 joist back to length needed to slide new beam up in the slot you just created.. Put the beam in place, use hangers for the 2x8 and the roof sits on the beam. Framing is easy and solved.

What about the foundation?
When you open a wall that wide ... 15' all the weight is being transferred to the jack studs on 2 ends.
You will need a proper footing under those studs.
So framing is easy, lets talk current floor and foundation.
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