Hi. I need some help now.
I'm considering opening up the doorway between the kitchen and the living room to about a 2.5m opening.
I've read that I need to make some kind of building notification and that I should hire a company to do a load calculation. But right now, I just want to know how big the beam will be and how to attach it.
My house is somewhat unusual both in shape and construction. It's a 3-story house. You enter on the middle floor, then you can go half a floor down and half a floor up from the middle floor.
The plot slopes so all floors are above ground. The lower floor, therefore, has an upper floor, at least parts of it.
All floors have a concrete slab on the ground, without any floor framework; the floors are directly on the concrete. On the lower floor, there is the kitchen and laundry room, and above this are all the bedrooms. The kitchen has a concrete floor and concrete ceiling (so the bedrooms also have concrete floors, completely without framework, directly on the concrete).
The walls in the kitchen and laundry room are lightweight concrete blocks, as there's a concrete slab on top. All other walls are wooden walls.
It is one of these lightweight concrete walls that I want to make a 2.5m hole in, where there is currently a regular door opening. (The hole will be made from the door and towards one side)
Next to the kitchen is a living room. This is not an extension but has existed since the house was built, but it doesn't have an upper floor, and it has wooden walls like the rest of the house.
The construction of the living room is not affected, as the roof trusses do not rest on this wall that will be modified.
What's resting on the wall is the concrete slab of the upper floor. How heavy could it be? It's hard for you to guess, just as it's hard to guess how much of the weight is resting on this part of the wall.
Is there anyone who dares to guess/give me an idea?
Next question. How thick, high, and long can one guess the beam needs to be (we're talking I-beam, I assume)?
What do the beam designations mean? What should I look for if I'm searching for a used beam?
How do I attach such an iron beam to the lightweight concrete?
As you can see from the pictures, it's a short wall, but the long walls contain windows, a balcony door, and on the opposite side, a staircase, so there's no support for the concrete ceiling there (you can see that the windows and balcony door have reinforcements above them).
Do you have any floor plan of the house that shows the concrete slab spans and bearings as it would facilitate answering your questions? Additionally, if there is any section that shows the thickness of the concrete slab, it is even better!
I don't have such a drawing, so I'm quite lost...
At the stairs, I can measure the thickness, it's 23cm thick there. BUT!!! that's not correct!
The whole house is built so that the plates are first poured, then the walls are put up & after that the plumbing is run on the floor, through the openings, etc.
Then a layer of cement or something has been added on top of it, so that's perhaps 3 cm lost.
So we should assume the slab is 20cm thick.
Here are two more images
the first image shows the ground floor and mezzanine.
The second image shows in red where there is a pillar; that pillar is not made of lightweight concrete, and the wall in red is also not lightweight concrete but as solid as the pillar, must be cast concrete
I have now received the drawings, but I don't understand them.
They are in TIF format, which couldn't be uploaded here.
If I convert them to JPG, they become incredibly large, and then cannot be uploaded either.
The essential thing to understand what is needed in your case is knowing what is on the floor above. It's good that you are considering the beam's attachment. The lightweight concrete wall is probably not suitable for attaching the beam, and it may require concrete or steel columns to support the beam, and in the worst case, you may even need to reinforce the foundation, dig, and cast piers. However, this is very unlikely in your case. A 2.5m span cannot reasonably cause a significant load on the support points.
Above this wall stands the exterior wall of the floor above. That floor is built of wood.
So, of course, the wall is load-bearing, otherwise, they should have built a simple wooden wall.
But if one now installs a steel beam. Does anyone know how far it must go into the lightweight concrete if one does not put up a pillar?
I have almost one and a half meters of wall left on one side. Then on the other side, there are only about 40-50cm left, where maybe a pillar needs to be placed.
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