Basement Load Bearing Walls

Basement Partition Walls

Introduction:

If you are considering remodeling a basement by making an additional room and don’t know if you need to construct a load bearing wall you are not alone. I often receive questions regarding basement additions and wall framing. In most cases you do not have to be concerned with building a load bearing wall in the basement if all you want to do is put up some partition walls to form a room in an existing basement.

The load bearing structure has already been built into the basement when the house was constructed. You can easily identify the load bearing members by just looking at the ceiling in the roughed-in basement. The ceiling will consist of all sorts of items such as plumbing pipes, wiring, and floor joists to mention a few. In addition, you will see a center beam that is made of several pieces of planking that is laminated together with nails. There also could be a steel beam or an engineered manufactured beam rather than a beam made from laminated lumber.

The beam is the primary structural load carrying member for the house weight above. If you are just adding partition walls you do not need to be concerned with any load bearing walls. However, if you plan on taking out a portion of a main load carrying beam or remove any support post from under the beam you do indeed need to be concerned about building a load carrying wall in place of the beam.

This is rarely the case in most basement remodeling projects and if you are confronted with this issue I recommend you consult a building contractual engineer for advice. The load carrying beam support columns are often moved (not removed) to accommodate a door opening in a partition wall but when this is necessary a structural wall section must take the place of the column to support the weight of the house above.

For example; suppose the carry beam has support columns spaced every eight feet apart and one of them is smack in the middle of an intended doorway.

The columns position can be adjusted either by moving them left or right of their current position as long as a load bearing wall is built under the beam or any opening that is more than eight feet in length. This will still maintain the original support and weight distribution before you made the alteration. In the example below we moved column “b” two feet to the left and column ‘c” two feet to the right and added a new column. The new column is 6 feet from “a” and the distance between column “c” and “d” is now six foot too. The four foot door opening has double 2x4s on each side. There is no need for a header because the beam above acts as the header.

Building additional living space in the basement is a great way to increase the overall house living space. It’s not much more involved than building partition walls. None of these basement walls have to be load bearing walls as long as you do not disturb the existing structural integrity of the house.

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Basement Load Bearing Walls

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