I have a typical L-shape 2-story house with the Kitchen in the leg of the L at the back on the ground floor and a bathroom above it.
I want to take out the wall separating the kitchen and the dining room on the ground floor to create an open plan area. The wall is a double skin block wall (about 30cm thick) and everyone I spoke to assumed it was structural and full height. I was fully ready to have to pay a fair chunk for this, getting an engineer in and having to putting a steel in above the opening etc.
However, after the plasterboard was removed and a couple of the thermalite blocks taken out to enable inspection... it turns out the entire separating wall stops below the ceiling of the ground floor - the beams of the first floor are not even resting on it. A quick check upstairs backs this up, the wall separating the bathroom from the rest of the house upstairs is just a stud wall.
Looking further into it, the separating wall is only tied into the external walls by a SINGLE BLOCK on each side. It looks something like this:
So it would appear the entire wall can be demolished without any need for reinforcement.
Couple of questions though.
1. Why would it have been constructed like this? Is it normal? It would have been cheaper to put a stud wall in, and anything that costs more usually has a reason... extra insulation??!
2. Does removing this wall require Building Regs sign-off?
Cheers.
I want to take out the wall separating the kitchen and the dining room on the ground floor to create an open plan area. The wall is a double skin block wall (about 30cm thick) and everyone I spoke to assumed it was structural and full height. I was fully ready to have to pay a fair chunk for this, getting an engineer in and having to putting a steel in above the opening etc.
However, after the plasterboard was removed and a couple of the thermalite blocks taken out to enable inspection... it turns out the entire separating wall stops below the ceiling of the ground floor - the beams of the first floor are not even resting on it. A quick check upstairs backs this up, the wall separating the bathroom from the rest of the house upstairs is just a stud wall.
Looking further into it, the separating wall is only tied into the external walls by a SINGLE BLOCK on each side. It looks something like this:
So it would appear the entire wall can be demolished without any need for reinforcement.
Couple of questions though.
1. Why would it have been constructed like this? Is it normal? It would have been cheaper to put a stud wall in, and anything that costs more usually has a reason... extra insulation??!
2. Does removing this wall require Building Regs sign-off?
Cheers.
