Removal of load bearing walls in residential buildings 1

[L-H]

Hi all,

For existing residential buildings, the owners sometimes want to remove an interior wall, mostly at the kitchen or the living room to make the house more open. They would hire an engineer just to check if it is a bearing wall since that is the only thing they care about. For me it's not that hard to tell if a wall is a bearing wall (sometimes we need to cut holes into the ceiling drywall to see the joists above if necessary). But I also take into consideration if the removal of the wall would weaken the LFRS of the building. Modern houses have more open layout and more windows in the exterior walls so the interior walls could play an important role in the LFRS of the house. I'm just wondering if you guys do the same. For these small jobs, most of the time we would do a site visit and write a report to say if it is a bearing wall or not, and so we could not charge them much. But if we want to verify the effect of removal of the wall on the existing LFRS capacity, it will blow up the budget. Also, those jobs are often given to small sole proprietor structural engineers (or sometimes arch. and other disciplines trying to practice structural engineering). Many of those can tell if a wall is bearing wall based on experience but I doubt they know much about LFRS.

 

[Eng16080]

They would hire an engineer just to check if it is a bearing wall since that is the only thing they care about.

I think this is a bad assumption. A homeowner doesn't have the in-depth knowledge of an experienced structural engineer. They have likely heard the term "load-bearing wall" and loosely understand what it means, but that's about it. If a homeowner asks me to check if a wall is "load-bearing", I assume what they mean is they want me to analyze the structure as if the wall were to be removed, and determine what modifications to the structure would then be necessary.

It's not like a homeowner is making the distinction between a load-bearing wall which might be part of the structure's LFRS and one which isn't.

Imagine if you were the home-owner and your engineer told you that a wall is not "load-bearing" but didn't tell you that it's a significant part of the structure's LFRS. Most homeowners aren't going to ask if the wall is "load-bearing and/or if it's part of the LFRS" because they don't even know the right terminology to use.

I'm rambling now, but I think you get the point. You should check the LFRS. (In most cases for the work I do, it's likely not part of the LFRS, but sometimes is.)

 

[RontheRedneck]

When people ask me about bearing walls, I tell them to look below the wall before they look above. (This is in the midwest, where most houses have basements) If there's beam under the wall, it's probably load bearing. No beam - Probably not.

But I don't put anything in writing unless I look at it myself.

 

[Tomfh]

You need to check lateral stability too. Ensuring lateral stability is a fundamental duty of engineers. Even if you put it in writing that you won’t check it, a judge will likely find that you should have in the event of a disaster.

Often, this is a fairly cursory check, such as observing that many walls remain. Sometimes, it requires a more detailed examination. However, you can't simply ignore it.