Removing a load-bearing wall in an average house costs roughly £2,200 to £3,900 for a 3 to 3.5 metre opening on the ground floor, including the structural calculations, the steel beam, fitting it and making good afterwards. If the wall also carries storeys above it, that climbs to £3,000 to £5,200 with one storey and £5,500 to £9,500
with two. For the job itself you always need structural calculations, and you almost always need building regulations approval from your local authority, because the moment you touch the structure you are outside anything you can do without approval. You do not, however, need planning permission for a purely internal knock-through: nothing about the outside of the building changes.
Hello DIYer,
The nicest bit of remodelling I know is also the scariest.
Two small rooms become one big space. Light from the front of the house to the back. A view of the garden from the sofa. Everybody who has done it says the same thing: I should have done that years ago.
And then that one question that keeps you awake: is that wall load-bearing?
I get why it weighs on you. Because the mistake you make here does not show up straight away. You see it three months later, when a crack runs from the door frame to the ceiling. Or worse.
But here is the thing: this is not rocket science. It is a job with a fixed order, and if you stick to that order it goes fine.
In this article I will show you how to work out for yourself, with reasonable confidence, whether a wall is carrying load, why “load-bearing” and “stabilising” are two different things (almost everybody forgets that one), what the structural engineer actually does for you, how approvals really work, what the job involves step by step, which parts you can do yourself to save a thousand pounds, and which five surprises catch nearly everybody out.
Here we go:
What exactly is a load-bearing wall?
A load-bearing wall carries weight from the top of the house down to the bottom. Floors, storeys, the roof, and everything sitting on them: it all travels down through load-bearing walls and beams and ends up in the foundations.
A non-load-bearing wall, also called a partition or a stud wall, carries only itself. Take it out and structurally nothing happens.
Sounds simple. But there is a third category that plenty of people miss, and that is exactly where it goes wrong.
The forgotten third category: the stabilising wall
A wall can carry very little weight and still be essential. That is a stabilising wall, sometimes called a bracing wall or a shear wall.
A wall like that keeps your house upright under sideways load: wind against the front elevation, or simply the fact that a tall, narrow house is not stiff on its own. In narrow terraced houses, in 1960s to 1980s flats and in a lot of newer construction, internal walls do their share of this work.
The consequence: the “knock test” that half the internet recommends for identifying a load-bearing wall can send you completely the wrong way. A lightweight block wall can have a stabilising function. A thick wall can be purely decorative.
So here is the first honest rule of this article: your own investigation exists so you know what to ask the structural engineer, not so you can skip the structural engineer.
What happens when you get it wrong
Not always an immediate collapse. Usually something more gradual:
- Diagonal cracks above doors and windows upstairs, often within a few months
- Doors and windows binding because the frames are pulling out of square
- The floor above the opening deflecting, which shows up as a gap between skirting and floorboards
- Cracks in the outside wall where a bearing point has partly disappeared
- Damage your buildings insurance will not pay out on, because the alteration was not carried out properly
That last point is the expensive one. Structural damage caused by unapproved, uncalculated work is a classic exclusion. And the problem lands back on your desk when you sell, because a buyer with a surveyor spots a beam with no paperwork behind it straight away.
How do you recognise a load-bearing wall? 7 checks
Do all seven. One clue tells you very little. Five clues pointing the same way tell you a lot.
1. Ask your council for the original drawings
By far the best source, and most people skip it.
For virtually every house built with approval, there is a file held by the council: floor plans, sections and sometimes the original structural drawings. Many councils have their planning and building control records online, searchable by address. If yours does not, ask the building control team or the archive directly. It is often free or costs a small fee, and you normally have it within a few weeks.
Bear in mind that building control records are only reliably kept for more recent decades. For a Victorian terrace you may find nothing at all, and that is useful information in itself: it tells your engineer to expect a survey rather than a drawing.
On a drawing you recognise load-bearing walls by the hatching. Structural elements are usually filled in black or dark, or hatched, while partitions are drawn thin and open. Always check the key first, because drawing conventions vary by practice and by era.
Important: put the ground floor plan next to the first floor plan. Walls that sit in the same place on both floors are almost always carrying load.
2. Look at the direction of the floor joists
A timber floor is made up of joists running from bearing to bearing. Those bearings are load-bearing walls.
- A wall sitting at right angles underneath the joists: good chance it is load-bearing
- A wall running parallel with the joists: good chance it is not
How do you find the direction? Lift a board in the loft or the underfloor void, or look at the direction of the floorboards (they run at right angles to the joists). In a house with a concrete floor, look at the joints or at the direction of the ribs in the underfloor void.
3. Measure the thickness
Rule of thumb for a house with masonry internal walls: under 10 centimetres is usually not load-bearing, over 10 centimetres could be.
Measure the total thickness including plaster, in a doorway or at a pipe penetration. Careful though: thickness on its own is never proof. A 12 centimetre lightweight block wall plastered both sides carries nothing at all.
4. Knock on the wall
The classic test. A hollow sound and a bit of give when you push suggests plasterboard on a timber or metal stud frame. A solid sound suggests brick, block or concrete.
That tells you something about the material, not about the function. See the stabilising wall above.
5. Follow the wall up and down
Does the wall carry on in exactly the same position on the floor above? And can you see it again in the underfloor void or the cellar, as a brick sleeper wall or a wall running straight down onto the footings?
A wall that runs on one line from foundation to roof is almost certainly load-bearing. A wall that stands on the ground floor with nothing above it usually is not.
6. Look at where it sits in the plan
Load-bearing walls tend to sit in predictable places:
- The party walls between two terraced houses: always load-bearing, and shared with your neighbours into the bargain
- The wall around the stairwell
- The spine wall between the front and back rooms, running along the length of the house, which is the classic load-bearing wall in a Victorian or Edwardian terrace
- The wall by the service cupboard and the downstairs loo, because that is where the stiff core of the house sits
- Crosswalls in flats and maisonettes built by large-panel system methods: with that system virtually every crosswall carries load
7. Look at the age and the construction system
This is the check almost nobody mentions, and it saves you a lot of guessing.
| Period / system | What typically carries load | What to watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-1919, solid brick | Party walls plus a spine wall down the middle; timber joists | Joist ends are often built into the wall and the bearing can be rotten |
| 1919 to 1945, early cavity walls | External and party walls, usually a spine wall; timber joists | Internal partitions are often lath and plaster and carry nothing |
| 1945 to 1965 | External and party walls, sometimes a load-bearing central wall; timber or concrete floors | Thin partitions in lightweight block or clinker block are common |
| 1965 to 1990, large-panel and crosswall systems | Every concrete crosswall carries load | Removing one is often heavy going or impossible, always get an engineer in first |
| 1965 to 1990, traditional build | External and party walls plus the core around the stairs | Blockwork inner leaf, easy to spot from the large block format |
| Post-1990 | External and party walls, sometimes one load-bearing internal wall; beam-and-block or precast floors | The span direction of the floor units decides everything, usually visible on the drawings |
The outcome: what to do with what you found
Do several checks point to “load-bearing”? Then you ring a structural engineer. Full stop.
Do all the checks point to “not load-bearing”? Then you still ring an engineer if there is anything at all suspicious about the wall: it continues upstairs, it is thicker than 10 centimetres, or it sits under a staircase or a chimney breast. Advice at £130 to £260 is cheaper than anything that can go wrong afterwards.
Do I need approval to remove a load-bearing wall?
Yes, virtually always. And there is a lot of nonsense online about this, so here is the plain version.
Building regulations, not planning permission
These are two separate things and mixing them up is the single most common confusion on this job.
Planning permission is about what the outside of your building looks like and how the land is used. A purely internal knock-through changes nothing outside, so planning permission normally does not come into it.
Building regulations approval is about whether the work is structurally and technically sound, and that is exactly what a load-bearing wall is. Part A of the Building Regulations covers structure, and removing a load-bearing element falls squarely under it. There is no exemption you can slip through here.
Two exceptions where planning does bite: if your house is listed, you need listed building consent for internal alterations as well, and that is a proper application with real teeth. And if you live in a flat, permitted development rights do not apply in the same way and the lease usually decides matters anyway. More on flats below.
Full plans or a building notice?
You have two routes to building regulations approval, through your local authority building control or through an approved inspector.
A building notice is quick and light on paperwork, but nothing gets checked before you start. For structural work that is a poor trade: if the inspector disagrees with your beam on site, you are already committed.
A full plans application means you submit the drawings and calculations up front and get them approved before a tool comes out. For removing a load-bearing wall, that is the route you want. It is also the paperwork that a buyer’s solicitor will ask for later, in the form of a completion certificate.
What you need to submit
Building control wants certainty about safety. Reckon on:
- Structural calculations from a qualified structural engineer
- Structural drawings: existing and proposed floor plans, plus a detail of the bearing
- A photographic record or survey of the existing situation
- Sometimes a temporary propping scheme (the plan for supporting everything while the wall comes out)
On a full plans application the council has five weeks to decide, extendable to two months by agreement. So from the moment you ring the engineer, count on four to eight weeks before you can start. Fees vary a lot by council and are usually banded by the type and value of the work. For a single knock-through you are typically looking at £130 to £350, though some councils charge more.
Do not forget the inspections during the work. Building control will want to see the opening at key stages, generally before the beam is covered up and again at completion. Book them in, because an inspector who never saw the bearing will not sign it off.
Party walls: the bit people find out about too late
If you live in a terraced or semi-detached house and your beam is going to bear onto the wall you share with next door, you are cutting into a party structure. That brings you under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
In practice that means serving written notice on your neighbour, normally two months before you start. Your neighbour can consent, or dissent and appoint a surveyor, in which case surveyors agree an award setting out how the work is done and what condition the property was in beforehand.
This is not optional and it is not a formality. Two months is a long time to discover you have not started the clock. Serve the notice the same week your engineer confirms the beam bears on the party wall.
Living in a flat or a rented place?
Two situations where a surprising number of people come unstuck.
A flat. The structure of the building is almost never yours. It belongs to the freeholder, and your lease will contain a clause about structural alterations. That means you need a licence to alter from the freeholder or the managing agent, on top of building regulations approval. In practice they will want the same structural calculations plus, very often, their own engineer’s review at your cost. Start this early, because a freeholder’s consent process runs on its own timetable.
A rented home. A knock-through is a substantial alteration to the property. You need your landlord’s written consent, and for a load-bearing wall they will say no in virtually every case.
Demolition, waste and asbestos
Separate from building regulations, a few practical rules apply to the demolition itself.
A single internal opening does not need a demolition notice: those apply to taking down whole buildings or substantial parts of them. A larger strip-out of a house can be a different matter, so check with your council if that is what you are planning.
If your skip is going on the road rather than the drive, you need a skip permit from the council. Cheap, quick, and a fine if you skip it.
And on asbestos, DIY stops. If your house was built or refurbished before 2000, asbestos may well be in there. Most asbestos work in a home has to be done by a licensed contractor, and the rest still needs to be handled to HSE rules. That is not a recommendation, that is the law.
The structural calculations: what you get and what it costs
The engineer works out what load sits on the wall and which section can take it over. That is not a formality, because the same span can call for a 152 UB in one house and a 203 UC in another.
What it costs: reckon on £350 to £950, depending on the span and the complexity. A short opening on the ground floor sits at the bottom of that range, a 5 metre knock-through with two storeys above at the top. Always ask whether a site survey is included: some practices work purely from your measurements and photos, which puts the risk of a measuring error on you.
What you provide:
- The original drawings from the council (or confirmation that none exist)
- Photos of the wall, both sides, floor to ceiling
- Clear measurements: length of the opening you want, height, wall thickness, storey height
- What sits above the wall: another storey, a loft, the roof
- The age of the house and, if you know it, the floor type
What you get back:
- The calculations, with the chosen section size and steel grade (usually S275 or S355)
- The required bearing length and the size of the padstones
- Whether columns are needed, and whether the existing foundations can take the new point load
- A temporary propping scheme
- The drawings you submit with your building control application
Which beam goes in? UB, UC and the European sections in plain language
You see these letters everywhere and nobody explains them. Here we go:
They are all steel sections shaped like an H or an I. The difference is in the ratio between depth and width.
| Section | Shape | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|
| UB (universal beam) | Narrow and deep, a true I shape | Short spans and lighter loads, for example an opening up to about 2.5 metres |
| UC (universal column) | Roughly as wide as it is deep | The middle ground and the heavy end: openings from about 2.5 metres up, and anything with two storeys above |
| PFC (parallel flange channel) | A C shape, flat on one side | Often used in pairs either side of a wall, or where you need a flat face against masonry |
British sections are named by depth × width × mass, so a 203 × 133 × 25 UB is 203 millimetres deep, 133 wide and weighs 25 kilos per metre. The European equivalents you will also see quoted are IPE (narrow and deep, like a UB), HEA and HEB (square in proportion, like a UC), and there the number is roughly the depth in millimetres. An HEA 200 is about 200 millimetres deep.
Indicative material prices (bare steel, excluding fitting, galvanising or powder coating): a light UB or IPE 160 runs around £150 to £250, a mid-range UC or HEA 200 around £250 to £430, and a heavy UC or HEB 240 around £600 to £850. Steel prices move with the market, so always get a current quote from a local steel stockholder.
Why deflection matters more than strength
This is the heart of why you do not pull this off a table on the internet.
A beam that is just about strong enough can still deflect too much. And masonry above a beam is not flexible: it cracks at a couple of millimetres of movement. So for a beam under masonry, an engineer works to a tighter deflection limit than the bare legal minimum. That is exactly why the answer sometimes comes back as a section that looks “way over the top”.
Do not try to negotiate this down. A beam one size lighter saves you a couple of hundred pounds and buys you cracks.
Columns and foundations: the point load everybody forgets
A wall spreads its load along its whole length. A beam does not. It gathers everything into two points, at the ends.
So at those two spots you suddenly have a serious point load on the masonry underneath, and through that masonry onto the foundations. In plenty of older houses the foundations were never designed for it.
The engineer looks at this. Sometimes there is nothing to worry about. Sometimes a steel column is needed to take the load straight down, and sometimes that column needs a concrete pad foundation underneath it, or the existing footing needs underpinning. Budget £350 to £800 for a pad like that.
Is your house on soft ground, or do you already have doubts about the foundations? Get that investigated first. A knock-through above a problem foundation makes an existing problem visible at the worst possible moment.
The job step by step
This is what a knock-through looks like in practice. Stick to this order whether you are doing it yourself, doing part of it yourself, or handing the whole thing over.
1. Clear the room and seal it off. Everything out, and anything that cannot move gets covered in sheeting. Put dust screens with tape into the doorways. This is not a luxury: masonry rubble throws off an unbelievable amount of fine dust and it travels through the whole house.
2. Isolate the services and trace them. Turn off the relevant circuits and scan the wall with a detector. Are there water pipes or a gas pipe in there? Get them rerouted first. A gas pipe in a wall you are about to take out means the job stops until a registered engineer has been.
3. Check for asbestos. If your house was built or refurbished before 2000, asbestos may be in there. Think asbestos insulating board behind a skirting, in a service duct, or in old adhesive residue. If in doubt, have an asbestos survey done before you put a drill in the wall.
4. Get the temporary propping in. This is the safety step. Following the propping scheme, you put props on both sides of the wall under the joists or the floor, with a substantial timber needle or head plate across them to spread the load. Props have to stand on something solid, not on a thin screed or a floating floor. Down in the underfloor void a prop stands on a spreader plate.
5. Cut the slot for the beam, carefully. You take out only the masonry where the beam is going to sit, plus the bearing faces. Work from the top down and use a hand bolster or a light breaker rather than a heavy demolition hammer: you do not want to shake the brickwork above loose.
6. Get the bearings flat and fully supported. The beam has to sit completely and evenly on its bearing. Build up or cast the bearing faces level, and set the padstones the engineer has specified. Those concrete or steel pads spread the point load over a bigger area of masonry.
7. Lift the beam in. A 4 metre UC of any real size weighs well over 170 kilos. That means three or four people minimum, or a lifter. Work out beforehand how you are even going to get it into the room: through the front door, in through a window, or in two pieces spliced together on site.
8. Pin the beam up and fill the gap. Critical, and often done sloppily. The beam has to sit tight against the masonry above, otherwise the structure settles a few millimetres before the beam starts working. That settlement is your cracking. You pin the beam with steel wedges or shims and fill the remaining gap with non-shrink grout. Not ordinary mortar, not expanding foam.
9. Let the grout cure. Non-shrink grout needs time, usually 24 to 48 hours minimum, sometimes longer. Check the bag.
10. Only then take the props out. Slowly, one at a time, watching for any movement.
11. Take the rest of the wall out. Now, and not before. The masonry under the beam can come away.
12. Reinstate services, fire protection and finishes. Electrics back in, steel fire protected where that is required, and only after that plastering and decorating.
Fire protection: the part that gets left out everywhere
Steel is strong, but it loses its load-carrying ability quickly at high temperatures. Above roughly 500 degrees the strength falls away, and in a house fire that is not a theoretical temperature.
That is why load-bearing elements have to achieve a minimum period of fire resistance. How long depends on your house: for a dwelling of up to three storeys the usual requirement is 30 minutes, and it goes up to 60 minutes for taller houses and above a basement. A bare steel beam left on show generally does not meet it.
Your building control officer confirms what applies in your case. Ask before you order anything.
Solutions in a house:
- Boxing in with fire-rated plasterboard, often in two layers, in a boxed casing. By far the most common and the cheapest.
- Intumescent paint, which foams up in heat. Dearer, but the steel stays on show. Popular for an industrial look.
- Encasing in masonry or concrete, which protects the steel by burying it.
Want to leave the beam exposed, which a lot of people like the look of? Discuss it with the engineer and with building control up front, and budget for the coating. Having to box in a beautiful beam after the fact is a waste.
What can you do yourself and what not?
This is where your biggest saving sits, so let us be specific.
Absolutely fine to do yourself:
- Clearing the room, sealing it off and keeping the dust down
- Requesting the original drawings from the council
- Demolishing the non-structural parts and getting the rubble away
- Submitting the building control application (with the engineer’s documents)
- The making good: plastering, decorating, skirtings, floor finish
- Building and boarding the casing around the beam
Always contract out:
- The structural calculations
- Executing the propping scheme and installing the beam, unless you have real structural experience
- Moving gas pipes
- Asbestos, always
Realistic saving if you do the demolition, the disposal and the finishing yourself: £700 to £1,300. What you get in return is two to three days of heavy, dusty work. For plenty of people that is a fair trade, but do not skimp on the propping or the bearings to squeeze out another couple of hundred.
What does it cost? The full breakdown
The figures below are indicative for a 3 to 3.5 metre opening on the ground floor of an ordinary house. Regional differences of 10 to 15 per cent are normal, and in London and the South East you are usually at the top of the range.
| Item | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Structural calculations | £350 to £950 | Including drawings, often including a survey |
| Building control fees | £130 to £350 | Varies a lot by council |
| Steel beam (material) | £175 to £850 | Depending on section and length |
| Padstones and fixings | £45 to £130 | As per the calculations |
| Prop hire | £130 to £350 | Per week, including needles |
| Demolition and waste removal | £250 to £500 | Skip or bagged collection |
| Fitting and pinning the beam | £600 to £950 | Labour, usually two people, one to two days |
| Moving electrics | £130 to £400 | More if a new circuit is needed |
| Fire protection | £130 to £430 | Plasterboard cheaper than coating |
| Plastering and decorating | £250 to £500 | For the opening and the junctions |
| Total, ground floor, 3 to 3.5 metres | £2,200 to £3,900 | Excluding VAT and excluding surprises |
Extras that push the job up:
- One storey above: £3,000 to £5,200 in total
- Two storeys above: £5,500 to £9,500 in total
- Steel column plus concrete pad foundation: £350 to £800 per bearing point
- Asbestos survey: £250 to £500
- Asbestos removal: from around £430, heavily dependent on quantity and access
- Party wall surveyor: £700 to £1,700 if your neighbour dissents and appoints their own
- Running the floor finish through: easy to forget and easily £850, because the two rooms rarely had the same floor
Add at least 10 per cent to your total budget for the unforeseen. In a house built before 1970 I would use 15 per cent.
Five surprises that catch nearly everybody out
1. There is a flue in there. In a lot of older houses a chimney flue runs through the internal wall. You cannot simply cut it away: if there is still an appliance connected upstairs, you need a solution. And even with nothing connected, the chimney breast is often carrying load in its own right.
2. The two rooms are at different floor levels. A classic on a knock-through between a room and the kitchen. The difference is often 2 to 5 centimetres and you only notice it once the wall is gone. Measure it beforehand with a level or a laser: it decides whether you need a levelling compound and what your floor is going to look like.
3. The acoustics change completely. Two small rooms full of soft furnishings become one long space with a hard echo. Not a structural problem, but very much something people regret afterwards. Budget for some soft material: a big rug, curtains down to the floor, a wall of books.
4. The heating no longer adds up. Two radiators that heated two small rooms do not automatically heat one large space with an extra cold bridge thrown in. Recalculate your heat loss, and pay particular attention to the spot under the window on the garden side.
5. Your whole house is unusable for three days. There is more dust than you can picture, and more noise. Plan it for a stretch when you can sleep somewhere else, or build a proper dust wall with a zip in it.
Common mistakes
- Starting the demolition and only then ringing the engineer. At that point there is no way back and you pay a premium for urgency.
- Propping on one side only. The load comes down onto the whole wall, so you support both sides.
- Taking the props out too early. The grout has to be cured. Otherwise the whole lot settles anyway.
- Filling the gap above the beam with foam or ordinary mortar. Only non-shrink grout does what you need.
- Trimming the bearing length because the beam does not quite fit. The bearing length is in the calculations. If it does not fit, you cut the bearing pocket deeper, you do not shorten the beam.
- Not protecting the beam against corrosion. In a dry internal space it is not much of an issue, but for an opening into a kitchen, a bathroom or an external wall you want a coating or galvanised steel.
- Forgetting your neighbours have an interest in the party wall. In a terrace the party wall is shared, and the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 puts a two month notice period in your way. Talk to them early, if only because it is the decent thing to do.
- Skipping approval because “nobody will ever see it”. It shows up on sale, on a survey and on a claim. And your insurer is reading along.
Alternatives if a full knock-through does not suit
Not every wish calls for a 5 metre beam.
- A narrower opening of 90 to 120 centimetres. Above an opening that size you can often use a much lighter section or even an off-the-shelf lintel. You still need the calculations, but the section and the cost come down a long way.
- A knock-through with a pier in the middle. Two openings with a column between them. That cuts the span dramatically, which gets you a lighter section and smaller point loads. Structurally often the smartest answer, and it looks rather good too.
- A goalpost frame instead of a single beam. For large spans, or where the foundations are limited, an engineer sometimes goes for a steel goalpost (a beam plus two columns bolted together as a frame). Dearer, but it distributes the load differently.
- Leave the wall and fit a big sliding door. Sounds like a compromise, but it delivers exactly that one effect of light for a fraction of the money, and you keep the option of closing the rooms off.
Frequently asked questions
Can I remove a load-bearing wall without approval?
No. Removing a load-bearing element falls under Part A of the Building Regulations, so you need building regulations approval from your local authority or an approved inspector, with structural calculations and drawings. Planning permission is a separate matter and normally does not apply to internal work, unless your house is listed or you live in a flat.
How do I know for certain whether a wall is load-bearing?
You only know for certain when a structural engineer confirms it. You can get a long way yourself with five checks: the original drawings from the council, the direction of the floor joists (at right angles underneath usually means load-bearing), the thickness (over 10 centimetres is suspicious), whether the wall continues on the floor above, and whether it sits on footings in the underfloor void. If several of those point the same way, ring an engineer.
How long does removing a load-bearing wall take?
The building work itself usually takes one to three working days, plus waiting time for the grout to cure and then the finishing. The whole process from your first phone call takes longer: reckon on one to two weeks for the structural calculations and up to eight weeks for building control. Four to eight weeks of total lead time is realistic, and longer if a party wall notice or a freeholder is involved.
What do structural calculations for a load-bearing wall cost?
Reckon on £350 to £950, depending on the span and the complexity. A short opening on the ground floor sits at the bottom of that range, a wide knock-through with two storeys above at the top. Always ask whether a site survey and the drawings for the building control application are included.
Do I need a party wall agreement?
If your beam bears onto the wall you share with a neighbour, yes. The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 requires you to serve written notice, normally two months before you start. Your neighbour can consent in writing, or dissent and appoint a surveyor, in which case surveyors draw up an award. Serve the notice as soon as your engineer confirms the beam lands on the party wall.
Can I remove a load-bearing wall in a flat?
Only with the freeholder’s consent, on top of building regulations approval. The structure belongs to the freeholder and your lease will almost certainly require a licence to alter. In blocks built by large-panel or crosswall systems (roughly 1965 to 1990) virtually every concrete crosswall carries load as well, which makes an opening technically heavy going or sometimes impossible.
Can I remove a load-bearing wall myself?
Parts of it, yes. Clearing out, sealing off, the demolition, the waste removal and the finishing are all fine to do yourself, and that saves £700 to £1,300. But the calculations, the propping and the fitting and pinning of the beam go to somebody with structural experience. That is where the safety sits, and it is also exactly where the mistake sits that you only see months later as a crack.
Finally
A knock-through is one of the few jobs where the preparation weighs heavier than the work itself.
Get the drawings. Work out the joist direction. Ring the engineer. Apply for approval. Only then pick up a tool.
Do it in that order and it is simply a few days of work with a beautiful result. Skip it and it is a gamble where you find out months later whether you won.
I know which of the two I would pick.
Are you remodelling and do you want to know exactly what you are building before you start? At Fred’s DIY Plans you will find clear building plans with material lists and step-by-step instructions, so you do not discover halfway through that your dimensions are out. Do yourself a favour. Have a look here.
Regards from Fred Schouten, handyman and DIYer through and through
PS: before you ring anybody, do this one thing: ask your council for the original drawings of your house. It is free or nearly free, it takes a couple of weeks, and it can save you a few hundred pounds in survey time at the engineer. And you will already half understand how your house is put together.