# Removing original foundation wall



## bcedergren (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm new here and never dealt with anything like this in my past homes, hoping to get some advice.

We bought a fixer-upper home on a lake and aside from some interesting ways previous owners added onto the place, they left many things in place. They added another 1/3 onto the house (on the west side) with a basement and never took the old west foundation wall out between them. There is also an original fireplace and chimney on that side that runs from the bottom of the foundation up to the roof. Again, they kept all this in place when they added onto the home and just sheetrocked around it all.

We are planning to remove the chimney, fireplace and 13' of the west foundation wall to adjoin the old basement and newer added on basement.

The roof gables "/\" on the west side of the house. The floor joists above are parallel with the west foundation wall as well.

My question is when we remove this old foundation wall, should we put up a couple verticle posts to hold the weight on that side? There is still the back (south) half of the west foundation wall that will remain in place. We bought 4 engineered beams 14' long for support. There is no longer going to be a wall upstairs from it, that was the fireplace/chimney so the only weight on the old foundation location would be from the roof.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, you all sound like remodeling wizards from what I've read so far.

-Barry


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## nealtw (Mar 18, 2011)

If the floor joists are running north south there will be no weight on the west wall except for the joists that were cut for the fireplace and you could sister new ones on.
If the roof trusses are running north south there will be little or no weight on the west wall, but if the roof was hand framed with rafters and supported ridge board and pony walls you will need to support the original gable.
You should spend a few dollars and have an engineer do a report for you, It is valuable if you sell the house as well your own piece of mind.


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## joecaption (Mar 20, 2011)

Please have someone that knows what there doing come look at this idea.
Just this week we have to go back and lift a house where someone added on a second story and the whole house is now sinking, and another where the home owner decided to remove supporting walls  so now the second floor is sagging so bad there's 1/2 gaps in the baseboards.
Over $20,000 worth of work, just because someone did not know what they were doing.


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## itsreallyconc (Mar 20, 2011)

*we LOVE those guys, joe    if there's never enough time or $ to do it right the 1st time, where do they find it to do it over ?*


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## oldognewtrick (Mar 20, 2011)

itsreallyconc said:


> *we LOVE those guys, joe    if there's never enough time or $ to do it right the 1st time, where do they find it to do it over ?*



Because a lot of folks don't believe reputable folks in the trade who offer to provide a better installation at a larger price. After all, we only charge more because we're making more money


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