I'm planning on removing a load bearing wall, so I've been doing some preliminary investigation. Don't worry I'll have an engineer when I can find one willing to do a small job.
The wall in question is about 16' and is located on the main floor of a two story house. The basement has a 20' steel beam (W10x30) in the same location. I was concerned that placing the end post of the upstairs beam 4' from the end of the basement beam would stress the steel beam too much. So I plugged the numbers (1200 * 20 vs 1200 * 4 + 9600 + 9600) into a couple of beam programs and discovered that the deflection numbers actually decreased. I must be missing something here?