Supporting Masonry Against Wind Loads

[seconb]

Hi All,

The building in the attached image is to have all internal walls removed within the East portion. It is single-storey cavity walls with timber trusses spanning N to S.

I require an open space with as few intrusions as possible, without leaving any buttressing walls. Does anyone know a way to keep the exterior wall safe against wind loads that does not intrude on room space? Adding new steelwork in is not a problem if required.

 

[EngDM]

I'd imagine the interior walls are just non-structural demising walls and don't do much of anything for the masonry walls. The masonry walls likely span from floor to truss and transfer loads into the floor and roof diapghram. Diaphram loads being transfered to shear collectors on the exterior walls.

Hard to say without consulting the existing structural drawings.

 

[JAE]

For the component of the remaining load bearing masonry walls - I'd check the walls with the current loads (roof dead+Live/Snow) and component wind loads.
The segments of walls between windows would be like a beam/column. Do you know if they are grouted or reinforced?

The interior walls may or may not be currently serving as lateral shear walls....depends on the roof diaphragm and how far it can span (left to right in your plan) as well as depending on the shear capacity of the remaining shear walls at each end.

Lots of things to check but it might work as is.

If you can temporarily shore the roof, you could bust out the interior face shells of the exterior block walls at set locations and insert vertical rebar and re-grout to turn non-reinforced block masonry into reinforced block masonry. Labor intensive but avoids pilasters or interior vertical stiffening beams.

 

[seconb]

Thankyou EngDM and JAE for your replies.

JAE - The walls are grouted, which makes me feel like some additional support is required as the largest span will be 12m. My SE is saying it will be okay, I just wanted to understand if this is pretty typical.

 

[JAE]

Well if you have a structural engineer on board - and you are not an SE - I'm confident that we here online can't help you any more than your SE can.

There's nothing typical really about this situation so it depends on whether your SE has properly checked the masonry to see if it is adequate under the new configuration (without interior walls).