Hello everyone,

I have recently purchased a house and would like to demolish a wall. But before doing that I would like to make sure that it is not a structural wall. From tapping sound it appeard a bit solid (may be due to cement boards underneath!) however, one friend of mine suggested that I drill a few holes in the wall. If it is very easy to drill hole (in seconds) and then it is unlikely to be structural.

I did the same and I was able to make 10mm holes in seconds. It gave a bit of initial resistance and then sank fairly rapidly. The thing that came out of drilling was fine brownish powder.

The question is whether the wall is structural or not and will be safe to take it down?

The house was build in 1930's by city council.

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Regards.

It's what's above it that matters. You can get load bearing stud walls. Pull a board or two up and have a look.


lee

msu! you're scaring the cr*p out of me!
As Lee33 says, it's what the wall is holding up that matters, not whether you can drill into it 'quickly' ?!? (lord preserve us!)
Rather than risk you doing yourself or the house some damage I think the safest advise here to you Msu is to get someone in who knows!
In the meantime...stop drilling!!

lee33 is right msu. It's the load-bearing walls that you need to be careful with. If you do wish to remove a wall, make sure a builder does this for you AND he MUST use a lintol if it's a load bearing wall. You can usually tell which these walls are because they literally are built from the ground floor directly upwards to the roof.

You'll also have to comply with buildings regs and get the support inspected to ensure it's up to specification. There are no short cuts here msu and no substitute for getting advice from a qualified source!

Thanks to all who kindly posted their opinion/ suggestions.

I got the point.

Hi,

It’s me again.

The wall mentioned above has long been taken care-off. It was a long (3m+) structural wall (supporting joist of first floor at right angle) and was replaced with RSJ with proper calculations. In this case, the fact that it is perpendicular to the joist was good enough to predict that it is a structural wall. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Now another far smaller problem. I wanted to remove a small (about 4 feet) side wall that makes initial portion of inside wall of boxed in staircase to first floor and replace it with wooden railings. This section of wall is parallel to the direction of joist. There is no joint or junction on top of this There is no joist directly on top of that wall but part of the joist is sitting parallel on the plaster of the wall.

Due to the fact that the joist is parallel to the wall with no joint or the joist itself sitting on the wall, should I assume that it is non-structural and I can basically convert this boxed in staircase to single open staircase?

Thanks for suggestion in advance.

Before you do anything with the stairs you should seek advice again because aside from the wall issue i belive that the height of the new rails and distances between spindles has to comply with building regs. I know one family who have just had to change theirs as they wish to foster children and this issue came up...