What beam size?

Hi all,

I have a 1945 chalet bungalow that has a ground floor breeze block brick wall between WC and bathroom., 1.6metres in length and 2.4metres high.
The wall is running parellel with joists above. A joist above does sit on the wall, but not centrally at all, in fact only about half of it.
The plasterboard of the two rooms runs between the wall and the joists.
I have had a couple of builders say its not load bearing but I'm not yet in agreement with them. Reason being is that the brick wall is parallel with the edge of the stair case. The top of the stair case is about 1.5metres away but this wall could be supporting the load from the missing joists where the staircase is. The wall runs under the upstairs WC and there is also a dormar that juts out the side of the building not far from this area.
Furthermore, when fitting new boards to the kitchen ceiling the joists are not installed in any standard widths apart and some are thicker than others, making that job a rather long winded one! Just makes me think that even an experienced eye may get this wrong!
I have had an engineer out and he said it could be load bearing.
Therefore, whether it is or not - it's coming out and I will put a beam in there. Could get a builder in to do it, but given that none I have spoke to are actually sure about it being load bearing, I can get this done myself.
I can retain breeze block pillars either side of the gap but would like to know how to calculate the beam required. Do I actually need to inform building control about this?

 

Its the position of the plasterboard thats gives it away. Because plasterboard is about as strong as a crispbread biscuit it would be very bad practise to include a layer of it between a wall carrying any load and the load itself. So the house would have been built as open plan,then the internal dividing walls put in after. ref. your varying joists, the dormer was not a modification, was it? Because its floor joists are often 7" X 2" as against ceiling joists of 4" X 2".
Frank

 

The question as to whether or not it is load-bearing will not be safely answered on a forum.
It is not easy to follow the layout from your description, but you really need to start pulling boards up upstairs to
know one way or the other.

 

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