Sanity check

[johnny2007]

Hi everyone,
My friend is opening up a space between 2 small receptions on his ground floor to make one bigger one.
The property is a former council house with concrete floors and all walls, including internal walls are bricks.
Now, this wall is a single skin internal brick wall, running in the same direction of the ceiling joists and sitting between ceiling joists.
I cut the plasterboard to make sure nothing is supported by this wall and in fact, along it's 3 metre length there's nothing on it.
The builder called for a quote (I'm retired, remember?) said that steels are needed and SE calculations (???)
My friend questioned the reason as the wall is not supporting anything and the builder said that walls are always supporting something.
Am I going senile?
If you can touch the top of the wall all the way along and don't find anything sitting on it, what can it be supporting?
Needless to say, the quote offered is very high and SE report must be done by the builder's preferred engineer.
Just checking that I'm not going mad: this is a rip off, correct?
Wanna show this to my friend after answers.
Thanks.

 

[mrrusty]

If you can literally see nothing sitting on top of the wall and it runs parallel to the joists, then almost certainly IMHO it won't be structural and you can take it out - had the same in our current house and removed without issue, and with BC being aware as we had other works going on. There is a small possibility it gives structural stability as a buttress to a perpendicular wall, but without more info we can't tell. It would have been quite usual back in the day for older council houses and similar to have divided off pantrys, which were often quite large spaces.

 

[johnny2007]

That's what I always thought.
I even chased the plaster where this wall attaches to the external wall and it's not keyed in, so I can't understand what the builder is talking about.
Just charging more I suppose.

 

[^woody^]

Find another, better builder.

No internal wall in a typical domestic house buttresses an external wall

 

[johnny2007]

Find another, better builder.

No internal wall in a typical domestic house buttresses an external wall

I think the builder is a good one, but thought that he could take an older couple for a good ride.
My friend is not going to use him.
Thanks everyone.