Good evening,
I did train as a bricklayer years ago, and have worked on many sites and built many extensions, however I do not recall building anything like the extension I'm planning. I should point out it has been 20 years since I worked in the building trade, and since then I have retrained as an electrical and software engineer. This new knowledge seems to have pushed most of the old stuff out!
Later this year I am looking to start an extension to an existing town house. Currently the house is a typical 2 up 2 down style, with the kitchen protruding from the rear and the bathroom above the kitchen. So essentially the aerial view shows the house to be almost in an L shape.
I am looking to make the house square with a two storey extension next to the kitchen, I then want to make the downstairs open plan.
The walls I will need to demolish to create the open plan dining and kitchen area are;
a) the current dining room wall which is half internal and half external, and is between the dining room and the kitchen and outside.
b) the external kitchen wall which returns mid way from the "a".
I plan two supporting pillars inside where the current wall "a" is and place a Universal Beam on to this. There will be two further UBs going across from the old remaining kitchen wall to the newly built wall.
After this I am a little confused, I want to place another UB at right angles, along the middle and on top of these three, these will support what was the old external bathroom wall above.
I can find nowhere on the internet about resting one UB on top of another.
Every place I look, it appears the UBs needs to be specially made and bolted to each other, some places even mention welding UBs together.
I'm not looking for answers about the strengths of the UB etc, I plan to get a Structural Engineer to calculate these, but is there some part of building regs that I'm not aware of about placing a UB on another?
One final thing I should point out, is that ALL UBs will have the required 150mm either end.
I have uploaded a basic drawing which will hopefully show what I am trying to explain.
On the drawing, black is existing, orange new build, blue UBs, with the darker blue being the one I want to place on top of the other three.
I did train as a bricklayer years ago, and have worked on many sites and built many extensions, however I do not recall building anything like the extension I'm planning. I should point out it has been 20 years since I worked in the building trade, and since then I have retrained as an electrical and software engineer. This new knowledge seems to have pushed most of the old stuff out!
Later this year I am looking to start an extension to an existing town house. Currently the house is a typical 2 up 2 down style, with the kitchen protruding from the rear and the bathroom above the kitchen. So essentially the aerial view shows the house to be almost in an L shape.
I am looking to make the house square with a two storey extension next to the kitchen, I then want to make the downstairs open plan.
The walls I will need to demolish to create the open plan dining and kitchen area are;
a) the current dining room wall which is half internal and half external, and is between the dining room and the kitchen and outside.
b) the external kitchen wall which returns mid way from the "a".
I plan two supporting pillars inside where the current wall "a" is and place a Universal Beam on to this. There will be two further UBs going across from the old remaining kitchen wall to the newly built wall.
After this I am a little confused, I want to place another UB at right angles, along the middle and on top of these three, these will support what was the old external bathroom wall above.
I can find nowhere on the internet about resting one UB on top of another.
Every place I look, it appears the UBs needs to be specially made and bolted to each other, some places even mention welding UBs together.
I'm not looking for answers about the strengths of the UB etc, I plan to get a Structural Engineer to calculate these, but is there some part of building regs that I'm not aware of about placing a UB on another?
One final thing I should point out, is that ALL UBs will have the required 150mm either end.
I have uploaded a basic drawing which will hopefully show what I am trying to explain.
On the drawing, black is existing, orange new build, blue UBs, with the darker blue being the one I want to place on top of the other three.
