House: 2-story walkout 90’s
In the main level you have your typical layout. Sitting room on the right (Garage side) with the back and back middle containing the kitchen, but on the right side is another sitting room (Front left) with a formal Dinning Attached (Right Left). These rooms are adjoining. If you can picture all this. Center of the floor plan contains the stair stacked for all 3 levels. The customer would like to bury a beam (Preently the exposed beam creates a visual barrier between the formal dining and front sitting rooms). The beam is structural. Additionally there are posts supporting the beam that are hidden within short walls on either side (Framing in the space sort of).
We took out some of the recessed lights to get a look at the floor joists. The front room ceiling is running perpendicular to the dining room joists. We have HVAC above that and additional service lines.
Like every customer the comments begin trying to temper costs. We only have 20k.. blah blah blah and the entire projects is a kitchen remodel where we cannibalize the party wall in-between the formal dining room to make a large kitchen eliminating the formal dinning room entirely.
The money does not make sense here as the labor to do this job would far exceed the customer’s budget. That being said, it got me thinking. How would get this done? I know I would need to open the ceiling and expose the floor joists. I would have to temporarily support both rooms in order to eliminate the existing beam and posts, but then…. What do I do here? I realize we would need a plumber and Hvac person to rework those systems, but once eliminated what would be the best way to address the new beam? With the stairs in the way I am not sure where I could transfer that load. The opposite side would obviously be a post on the exterior wall (I think that’s correct… always learning of course).
I have not gotten a look at things uncovered, so I am speculating, but with the upstairs floor joists running to opposite directions, what would be the best way to bury a beam and carry the load of the second floor rooms above? Do I need to daylight the entire thing and then bring in an architect? They don’t have an original print for the home so we have nothing design-wise to work with. Would love your collective knowledge about tying in a buried beam in this situation and how I would transfer the stair side load? Where would that post go for instance? I know… Pictures would be helpful here, but methodical answers will suffice.
Thanks for reading
James H.
Savage, MN
Replies
Steel, cover with wood.
Read an engineering test, such as Timeshenco and Young, 'elements of strength of materials'.
Tell customer to read and add DIY labor and knowledge to keep costs low, better yet, advise them to DIY all of it if cost important and use surplus materials on cash basis.
win the lottery and hire an engineer?