Load bearing interior wall..?
Question:I have a 5yr old single story ranch home with a brick foundation. I have a galley kichen with dining area (thats only 8ft wide), the wall seperating the dining area from the living room is 4.5 ft starting at the external brick wall and ending at the door way to living area. Can i take that wall out to open up the dining area and make it feel bigger? Without adding support beams.
Answers:
the best way to check is to go down into your basement and find the steel support i-beam that will run between the basement walls. there maybe be a single beam running down the middle of your house parallel to the peak line on your roof. you may also have a few of these beams. most importantly if the wall in question is sitting above this beam or is near it running parallel to it then its a load bearing wall. shorter interior walls away from the beam running perpendicular to it will generally not be load bearing.
i had a similar partition wall near the main entrance-way separating my living and dining areas. this is a popular method to break up the entrance appeal when you walk into the house. it sounds like it can be removed without any problems.
You would have to consult an archietect , to be sure. Last thing i would do is go knocking out a wall cuz someone on FindHomeAnswers said its okay, then your roof caves in
oh and no one hires a structural engineer ..wtf? its an ARCHITECT.
If it's load bearing you should not remove the wall without somehow replacing the support that it is providing. It can cause sagging of your current ceiling over time.
Without seeing the blueprints for your house or examining the structure... NO ONE can answer.
That wall might be just a separation of rooms, which could be removed at will...
it might be holding the roof up, and removing it may have the whole house collapse..
Its definately a load bearing wall!
Usually in a ranch style house, it has a wider footprint so it needs interior support walls because the rafter span is so great.
but as said, you can check downstairs as the weight carried from that wall will have to be distributed down to the foundation to be a load bearing.
Why not leave the wall in and put a nice big opening in the middle? That would be easy to do with a header for support.
Typically you need to add beams/columns or header if you remove a load bearing wall... you need a structural engineer not a architect.
hi
most bearing wall will run the length of the house in the middle mostly supporting the roof trusts
check and see witch wall run long the middle of the house from front to back if the wall your planning too remove is not bearing you can remove it
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