Home Reno – Removing exterior wall(s) and replacing with glass windows and doors
pzeb
| Posted in Help/Work Wanted on
I’m a first time home buyer and I have a massive vision for my new home – I want to cut out my back exterior wall, possibly parts of the adjoining walls also and replace it with floor to ceiling glass windows and doors for that open air look onto the garden. I’m looking for a contractor specialist in San Diego county that can help with this. What are the first things I need to know and ask?
Replies
You've got quite a number of issues with this. Formost are the structural considerations with removing the wall. With floor to ceiling windows you need to support the floor and/or roof above. If the windows really go to the ceiling this leaves no room for a header, so some sort of structural work-around is necessary. If you remove the entire wall then you need to provide for shear loads that are probably now carried by that wall. Is this a 2 story house? Nextly Calif building code title 24 calls for certain energy loss and use requirements. Loosing a whole wall of insulation will require you make up for this somewhere else. That can be difficult. If this is a new house it was probably designed to just meet the standards. There's nothing wrong with that if there's no reason to overbuild, but it means that changing a wall like this will be quite a project.
I'm in San Diego County. email me [email protected] if you want.