Removing load bearing walls 😬 #carpentry #learn #loadbearing #structure

Load-bearing walls are critical to every structure. Exterior walls hold roof loads, interior walls hold floor loads. If we want to remove a load-bearing wall, it's important that we support these joists. Without the support of a load-bearing wall, these joists can easily cave in. Here's a basic floor plan. The joists ran in this direction. We have a load-bearing wall that the joists rest on. These partition walls are not load-bearing. Keep in mind, some partition walls are shear walls. It's very common for people to want their kitchen and their family room to have open concept. You'll need to install a header. Before a load-bearing wall gets removed, important steps have to be taken. Before you make a header or use an LVL, you need to contact an engineer. Your structure might have different point loads, shear forces, and bearing points along your walls. Depending if these are just rafters and hold a second floor or more, can significantly change LVL or header sizes. After engineering, you'll install temporary walls. These hold up the joists while the header is being installed. Now that the joists are braced, we'll remove this exterior wall and joists. For demonstration, now we're able to remove these studs and bottom plate. Our temporary wall holds the joists. This double top plate alone will not hold your joist weight. Then you'll lift your beam or LVL. And then we install jacks or trimmers to hold the weight. Depending on your situation, more jack studs might be required. Now your temp walls get removed. The weight on your joists transfers into your LVL, goes down your jack studs, transfers into your beam, and down into your footings. In some cases, this requires steel post, steel beams, and even bigger footing sizes. The reason you don't remove your top plate is because it handles lateral load. This top plate keeps the header a part of a continuous wall. If you lift the header fully to the joists, then it will require strapping from the top plate to the header. In this case, the strapping will get installed here and here. These headers typically get installed in three ways. The header installed below both the bottom and top plate. This is the easiest but has the lowest head room. The header installed up to the top plate. This method is a little harder but still pretty easy. The last method you would cut these joists both here and here and install your header flush. And this will get installed with joist hangers. These are the wrong size. I know. This will be the hardest and most expensive way. The header below the double plate gives you bad head room. The header below a single plate gives you better head room. And the header at the joist level gives you the best head room. But if you want to lift this header to make this flush, then this could end up too high and be upstairs. Thanks for watching.