Everything You Need To Know About Load Bearing Walls
When it comes to figuring out how to identify a weight bearing wall, there are certain signs of a load bearing wall that handymen and home improvement enthusiasts alike can use to make the distinction. Although it can be tricky to tell the difference at first, once you have figured out whether some walls are load-bearing or not, you will have an easier time identifying them quickly and easily.
What is a load-bearing wall?
A load-bearing wall is essentially one of the walls that keeps the roof or floor of a home or other building steady and supported. You may want to be able to tell the difference between a load-bearing wall and a non-load-bearing wall if you are trying to renovate your home or if you plan to remodel your home at some point in the future.
Needless to say, if you don’t know what a load-bearing wall is, you may run into big challenges while renovating or remodeling your home. If you accidentally interfere with a load-bearing wall or knock one down to open up a room, you could compromise your home’s ability to hold itself up and create safety risks, as well as costly problems for yourself and your home improvement team of contractors.
How to identify a weight-bearing wall
The easiest way to identify a weight-bearing wall is to locate joists on it. If the wall runs parallel to the joists in the floor framing system, it’s safe to say that the wall is probably not a load-bearing wall. If, on the other hand, the wall runs perpendicular to the joists in the floor framing system, it’s safe to bet that the wall is a load-bearing wall. This means that you should exercise extra caution when modifying or especially removing walls that run perpendicular to joists. There are cases where walls that run parallel to joists turn out to be weight-bearing walls. Because of these unique circumstances, it’s essential to rely on other factors to determine whether a wall is weight-bearing.
Some walls, such as certain partial walls, have special reinforcements like microlam beams taking up space in the opening above the wall. In these cases, the wall is almost certainly a load-bearing wall and, therefore, off-limits for interference or removal.
If you are trying to determine whether exterior walls are load-bearing walls, the answer to this question is usually yes. If you think about it, exterior walls have a unique position that allows them to hold up the home. Even if they don’t seem like weight-bearing walls at first glance, exterior walls may have certain beams or other reinforcements that make them ideal for supporting the roof and other components of the house.
Another indicator of weight-bearing is support (or lack thereof) under the wall. No support under a wall usually indicates that it’s not load-bearing.
Categorised in: Walls