Wall opening

Hi all. I have half a plan to open up a wall between the lounge and dining room to install french doors or similair. Some of you may remember how I once descibed my ground level floating floors being supported on 3" deep joists with a sleeper wall. So what precautions should I use to avoid buggering up the floors if I use props to support the wall before I install a lintel?

I'm not sure if the wall is single or double brick. The wall is shown here as a - b

formatting link

Thanks.

Arthur

Reply to
51
Loading thread data ...

You don't know if it's single or double brick? - have you not tried using a tape measure? - about 5 inch is a single wall and about 10 inch is a double wall.

Either way, this wall is a supporting wall, it looks like it's carrying the wall seperating bedrooms and also carrying floor joists upstairs so it will need substantial support...a few questions...

1) what width opening are you aiming for? 2) how high will the opening be? - are yoiu going all the way up to the ceiling or is it to be similar to a wide door opening? 3) who is doing the work?
Reply to
Phil L

The upper floor joists run parallel to this wall. Opening for double french doors upto standard door height. The upper half of this wall is single brick so safe to assume all of it is single brick. I did a wall opening by myself about ten years ago though this was about 4' wide. I didn't know about the 3" joists back then and the floor hasn't suffered as far as I can tell. But at that time the other side of that wall was a concrete kitchen floor.

This time though, I will probably hire men to do it.

Arthur

Reply to
51

The wall isn't built on the downstairs joists, it's built on concrete, if you can get underneath your floorboards you will see that the wall continues down to the foundations. This will need a steel gidrer installing to hold up the wall above - a pressed steel lintel is no good over this kind of span at 100mm wide....floorboards will probably have to be lifted in order to use acrow props because they need to stand on something solid, 3" joists are not suitable

Reply to
Phil L

Have you used the type of props that are used from one side and replace the need from props on both sides?

I think these are type

formatting link

Reply to
51

Yes, you still need acrow props to hold them up...and HSS are expensive, I pay about a fiver for a strongboy and a prop per week You just chisel out a horizontal joint straight through the mortar bed and these slot into it, over a 6ft span, one about 18in from each end will suffice and one or two courses above the desired height...their main drawback is that they are often in the way when coming to insert the steelwork...also you'll need to order the steel because it sometimes can take days...the order in which I would do this job is:

1) measure and order the steelwork, a 150 X 100mm will do it comfortably, at whatever length you require. 2) once the steel is on site, hack off the plaster on both sides of the wall and take up a few boards within a foot or two of the wall, spaced as mentioned above 3) measure the height of acrows you will need, not forgetting the extra 2 - 3 ft for the 'cellar' and pick them up, with the strongboys and two extra props (4 in total) 4) cut out the joints as req and insert the strongboys and props, making sure the props are upright, use a spirit level if possible. 5) carefully remove the brickwork below each prop, not panicking when 3 or 4 bricks fall at once, try to keep the sides square and straight. 6) insert the girder to the height required and brick up on top of the girder 7) next day, wedge in pieces of slate all along the brickwork horizontal joints (IE above the bricks you've laid and the existing hanging brickwork) 8) insert one prop under eah end of the girder and tighten, to force any loose brickwork etc back up, point up under each end of the girder, where it will effectively be sitting.

Day after remove all props.

Reply to
Phil L

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.