Removing ground floor wall - Lintel vs Remove Wall Upstairs?

[propertydev83]

We will be removing a number of walls downstairs in our current property.

One of these solid brick walls does not support any floors upstairs, but has a solid brick wall directly above, upstairs.

I was wondering about the difference in materials cost between removing the wall downstairs and fitting a steel lintel (bearing in mind that this particular lintel may likely also need a steel pillar/column for support at one end, or even both ends) and removing both the wall downstairs and the wall upstairs, and building a replacement stud wall upstairs eliminating the need for a steel lintel.

The wall in question is quite long (over 3m).

Forget about labour costs as we will be doing the work ourselves. At a quick glance a steel lintel of suitable strength may be around ~£200 mark? But this is before any steel pillars that may be needed. From a quick bit of research it could very well be cheaper than this to build a new stud wall of equivilent length upstairs.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[tony1851]

Questions of cost aside, are you sure the upstairs wall does not support anything in the roof (eg a purlin)?
Also, is this wall serving any stiffening function for an outer wall? Just because a wall may not support any load directtly above, it does not necessarily mean it is not structural; lateral stability of the house as a whole is also an important consideration.

 

[propertydev83]

I haven't double cgecked yet but I'm fairly certain the two-storey wall provides no support for the roof.

The wall doesn't adjoin the exterior or party wall of this end terrace. It currently runs between the hall/landing and the dining area/middle bedroom.

I am having a structural engineer around soon to calculate for other necessary lintels soon, and so I can discuss with him. Although I was hoping I may have been able to determine if this was A more economical option in advance.

 

[big-all]

do the joists join on the wall

 

[Chunkydoc]

As above!!
I thought this of a wall in my house, went up the loft and the joists are overlapping thus removing said wall would result in the ceilings upstairs coming down, for starters.