Loft conversion questions

[The Wombat]

Hello, sorry if this isn’t the right place, it’s my first time posting. I have a couple of question, both things I’m a little uneasy about. I have a builder working on a loft conversion and it has a large steal going across the ridge, my concern is it looks like that steal is only supported on around 6cm of brick. Basically it’s sitting on a metal plate, but 6cm penetration into a wall doesn’t seem a lot for something that is 6meters long and 30cm high and around 20 cm wide. It must weigh well over a tonne. Am I panicking over nothing?

The other thing he has done, is build a wall on top of the original wooden wall plate. So that 50% rests on that the other 50% on brick. Is this a problem? My primary concern is it will rot and make the wall unstable or compress and make the wall unstable.

Any help or advice much appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Normally we are instructed to have 100mm of bearing (surface) beneath steels (but certainly never less than 70mm). Depends on what the S/E has specified

Also not good practice to build masonry on top of timber as it can eventually rot, as you surmise, although on listed building work we often find Victorian softwood "padstones" which are in perfectly good nick after 150 years or more bricked into a wall (but we equally have to knock out about 20 to 30% of them which have rotted and replace them with cast in situ concrete padstones or pre-cast concrete padstone section). Unless the weight on top is enormous I don't see crushing as being that likely

 

[The Wombat]

Thank you for your detailed reply that’s very helpful!