The wall comes out. The load gets a new path to the ground.
We take out load-bearing walls and put in the beam that carries the house in their place. From $8,000 for a single-story wall with an engineered beam. With steel, a flush beam or a second floor above, $12,000 to $25,000. We also replace basement jack posts with permanent steel columns on new footers, from $2,500.
That is a wall with a roof and ceiling above it and no second floor, opened up with an engineered beam set below the ceiling. Read it as a starting point. Your own number comes after we have seen what the wall carries.
Taking out a load-bearing wall is a structural change. In Pennsylvania a structural change to a house needs a building permit from your township or borough, and the township will want the beam and its supports on paper.
An engineer sizes the beam for the load. Both are listed as their own lines on your proposal, never buried.
Every one of these gets talked through and priced before you sign.
If the wall is part of a kitchen remodel, it is designed and priced inside the kitchen.
The wall from both sides, the room above it and the basement below it.
We read the framing and tell you what the wall carries and which price range you are in.
A wall and beam job has no design fee. You get the whole job on paper, what is included and what is not, and the number.
Temporary walls, the beam, the posts, the patch. A written log every day until the final walkthrough.
Under a bathroom we remodeled this fall, the floor joists sat on a beam in the basement, and the beam sat on a telescoping jack post. The footer under the post had no steel in it. We shored the beam and broke out the old footer. We built a new footer with a full rebar mat held up off the bottom, so the steel sits inside the concrete where it belongs.
The column is Schedule 40 steel pipe, cut to within a sixteenth of an inch of the height, with a plate welded on each end, primed and painted before it went in. We poured the footer on a Friday and set the column the next Friday. Upstairs, the old bathroom joists came out and the new floor was framed level.
Sometimes the wall between a kitchen and a dining room carries nothing and comes out with no beam. The work is moving the switch, the outlet and the heating run inside it. Finding that out before the price is written is the point of the walkthrough.
Jenkintown, Glenside, Wyndmoor, Flourtown, Oreland, Dresher, Fort Washington, Maple Glen, Ambler, Lower Gwynedd, Blue Bell, Plymouth Meeting, Lafayette Hill, Elkins Park, Horsham and the rest of Montgomery County, PA.
Three clues. The floor joists above run across the wall and rest on it. There is a beam or another wall directly under it in the basement. It sits near the middle of the house. We read the framing from the basement and the attic, and if we still cannot tell, we open a small hole in the ceiling before anyone prices anything.
Yes. Taking out a load-bearing wall is a structural change, and under Pennsylvania's Uniform Construction Code a structural change to a house needs a building permit from your township or borough. Expect the township to ask for the beam and its supports on paper.
An engineered wood beam handles most single-story openings and costs less. Steel carries more in less depth, so it is the answer for a long opening, a second floor above, or a beam hidden up in the ceiling. An engineer sizes either one.
From $8,000 for a single-story wall with an engineered beam. With steel, a flush beam or a second floor above, $12,000 to $25,000. The engineer and the permit are their own lines. A new steel column on a new footer starts at $2,500.
It can be. The building code calls for a steel column of at least 3 inch Schedule 40 pipe, or an approved equivalent, held in place at the bottom. Many telescoping jack posts are sold as temporary support. If one has been holding up a beam for years, send a photo of it top to bottom and we will tell you what we see.
Sometimes, and we find out before we promise it. Many older houses around here have a basement slab only an inch or two thick, poured over dirt. It cannot take a jack. The load has to reach a real footer. In a bathroom remodel the better answer is often to support the framing where it is and build the new floor level on top of it.
Send us a few details and Karl will get back to you, usually the same day. The first conversation costs nothing, and you'll come away knowing roughly where your numbers land and whether we're the right fit.