Removing internal upstairs block wall...

[bigsid]

Hi, i'm refurbishing the upstairs of my mid-terrace house. I think it was built in the 50s or 60s, and it's an ex-council house. It looks like some odd building techniques were used in its construction, things like concrete finlock guttering (which I've had removed) and these weird hollow terracota blocks instead of breeze block for inside skin of the external walls.

One of the other odd things is that all of the upstairs internal walls are made of this thin lightweight block which is black and crumbly. It seems that these internal block walls are all sat directly onto the floorboards. The one I'm thinking of removing has nothing underneath it, it rests on the floor directly across the middle of the living room below.

My concern was that this could be some kind of supporting wall, but so far I've found no evidence of that. I smashed a few exploratory holes in the plasterboard ceiling near to the wall, as I wondered if the ceiling joists may have been resting on it, but that doesn't seem to be the case either, as it appears the plasterboard goes right through into the next room between the top of the wall and the bottom of the joist.

However, I'm still a bit nervous about taking this wall out. The ceiling joists I mentioned are 38mm wide by 70mm deep and cover a span a little over 5 meters, which seems like a long way to not be being supported by anything for such thin joists. Getting access to the loft is really tricky as there is about three feet of bloody insulation in there so it's impossible to see whats going on.

Am I missing anything here, or are there some other checks I can do to be absolutely certain that this wall isn't supporting anything?

Thanks

 

[stuart45]

It was quite common back then to build partition walls with 2 or 3 inch blocks off the timber floors. Trussed rafters use thin timbers, but are able to span without support.

 

[Nige F]

. It looks like some odd building techniques were used in its construction, these weird hollow terracota blocks instead of breeze block for inside skin of the external walls.





Am I missing anything here, or are there some other checks I can do to be absolutely certain that this wall isn't supporting anything?

Thanks

Don't think you're missing anything . But despite the ongoing debate about cavity wall insulation - I had a house with those poxy terracotta blocks in the early 80's - the difference when we got the cavities filled was amazing . But being ex Council it might have been done already

 

[bigsid]

Don't think you're missing anything . But despite the ongoing debate about cavity wall insulation - I had a house with those poxy terracotta blocks in the early 80's - the difference when we got the cavities filled was amazing . But being ex Council it might have been done already

The house seems to have had cavity wall insulation at some point. Looks like it was the one where they drill holes in the outer walls and spray in a material.