Loft Padstone or Steel plates?

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For a loft conversion, to rest a 5.9 meter Steel i beam should we use padstone or 30mm steel plates?

My SE has recommended 250 x 100 x 215 padstone. The only problem is this means i have to either lay the padstone below the ceilings in the bedrooms below, which we want to avoid. If we lay that size padstone in the loft it reduces head height considerably.

So we were tjinking of either 30mm steel plates to rest the steel beams on, or maybe concreate lintels?
 
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steel plates are certainly possible -ive done similar in the past.

you probably dont need 30mm though -thinner plate with steel shims would be ok -I think! -I could well be wrong so dont rely on my post, wait for a pro to come along.
 
My engineer suggested similar padstones for my loft floor, I had the same issue with not wanting to hack into the wall below, particularly as the padstone, when compared with the super hard bricks we have are unlikely to do anything that the bricks can't. Anyway, I asked about steel plates and ended up with 12mm steel plates that are 250mm x 100mm. I cast concrete anyway, with threaded rod to reinforce it, but to get the levels spot on rather than to act as padstones as such. Depending on what sort of height build-up you need it might be easier to go thicker on the steel.

There's a good chance that your BC officer will want the steels bolting down though, so it can't bounce and move if you have a rave up there. That's one of the reasons I cast concrete as I had maybe 50mm that I could set threaded rod into to allow me to bolt things down. I think if you have to drill vertically into the wall and resin fix rod there's too much risk of cracking the bricks below for my liking. Which best case means you're doing the decoration you were trying to avoid and worst case Building Control notice and decide they don't want the steel sat on cracked brickwork.

I used a laser level and got the levels within a mm or so across three points, so you don't need to use shims if you're careful. If you do, I'd probably cut up a few coke cans, depending how accurate you want it.

I suspect you wouldn't notice 5mm out, but you're being lazy if you can't hit that tolerance.
 
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If the steels 'bounced and moved' I suspect the timber floor would be acting as a trampoline.
 
Are you sure the bolting down is not more to with restraining the wall rather than bouncing the steel off? Anyway if the se hasn't specified it then it shouldn't be an issue
 

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