Hi There
As a strict DIYer i would like to calculate the size of beam required to support a wall, when I make a 2m wide opening in a wall.
I am an engineer, but have been working in science for years, so don't know where to start!
Can anyone offer any help or advice?
Thanks
Andrew
Aye - Tony Bryer will be along in a while, but until he's here I'll plug his allegedly excellent SuperBeam program, which you can get a fully-functional print-disabled version of at
Use a wooden "I" beam, not over engineered steel.
See:
Knowing what load is going to be supported by said beam would be one of your prerequisites.
Is this a load bearing wall? What is is made out of?
It is a solid brick wall (single thickness) supporting a similarly sized wall above. The joists upstairs run parallel to it, as do those in the loft, so I assume there is no load from the floors on it?
The wall is between my kitchen and dining room, I wish to make a kitchen-diner.
The calcs need to satisfy a building officer!
Thanks
Andrew
I'm willing to bet anything you can buy of that length (2m) will be fine.
But my bet won't. ;-)
There are various examples to be found by a quick Google. Try BS 5950
But a good general building reference book, which has some basic worked examples is The Building Construction Handbook, by Chudley and Greeno. Its about £15 and well worth it
First you need to know the load that a beam of a given section can carry, then work out the load that it will be supporting. Once you have the formula, steel section tables are available from Corus, and another Google on ' weights of building materials ' will get you the info to work out the loading.
I don't know if the Superbeam program already mentioned is available as a trial. But its the lazy option if you want it !
dg
This is just an anecdote relating to the above and is not meant to be smart: I heard of an engineer whose first job was for the Irish Telephone company in the early 1980s and his first assignment was to put a generator up on a "beam". He got the weight of the generator and calculated load factors and stuff by looking up some big tables for different materials and doing some calculations. Then he went to put the beam up. When he tried to find beams of certains sizes and/or materials, his choice was severely limited. In the end he used the biggest beam he could find. I suspect you will end up doing something similar (or biggest beam that is cheap and manageable)?
Des
Steel? get real a TJI "I" beam will do for most instances.
In that case just get a structural engineering firm to do the calcs. They will be believed by the BCO and have professional indemnity insurance if it falls down.
Indeed.
In the end, 'big enough' is all it has to be. 'Too big' is when it won't fit...
The steel cost is not huge.
Just get an I beam that comfortably fits in, and use that. I'd say a 6x3 I beam is more than man enough.
In the real world, price is always a consideration. Not sure what the price of a 2m Trus Joist is, but a 14' 6"x4" steel beam cost me £35 about 2 years ago.
Cheers Clive
I removed a stud but load bearing wall between kitchen and scullery. About
4 metres wide. BO was involved because of other works, and wanted calculations. Which I got. Smallest RSJ was fine, not surprisingly.
definition, the correctly chosen section in any particular location will not be over-engineered. I suspect that the OP will find that a
127 x 76 UB, 13kg/m is quite adequate but would advise him to get the calcs to confirm this from someone who is qualified (small 'q') to do so. As to using a wooden I-beam I could not find any span/load tables on the above site but generally would not advocate supporting masonry walls off timber, even though this was done in past times.
In the USA it is common to support brick walls with TJIs.
To be fair, some of the steel fabricators are very flexible these days. You can order pretty much exactly what you need.
It's a fundamentally unsound idea. TJI beams have got next to no lateral stability. This is not a problem with floors because the diaphragm effect of the floor deck keeps them straight and upright. If you put a beam under a wall where does the lateral support come from? In addition the OP wants to take out a wall at ground floor level and support the wall over with a beam taking ? 2-3 tons which means that at either end there will be an upward reaction of one ton or more on the bottom flange of the beam. There's no way any checking engineer would let you do this on a ply web beam without designed stiffeners.
If you can direct us to some span/load tables we might just see what would be needed.
Why on earth not ? In most old houses it is the stone lintels that fail, not the wooden ones. The only time wooden ones fail is when there is an unfixed source of damp causing decay. Our house has bits up to 400 years old and a good mixture of oak, stone and modern lintels in the extension, and I bet I know which bits will still be intact in another couple of hundred years.
Well the main problem is progressive and seasonal movement, which may not only play havoc with the decorations of a modern house, but may not be suitable to other materials in the structure which don't cope to well with such movement.
dg
Our local steel suppliers will do the calcs, and select a suitable beam for you if you ask nicely
dg
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