I have an apartment built in the 60s. The floor and ceiling is concrete/cement, as are most walls. I am contemplating getting rid of a wall, as shown in the scaled diagram of the apartment I made myself, circled in red. The wall is 12cm thick, has a door in it, and turns at one end to form an "L" shape. As far as I can tell, it could be made of cement bricks.
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The question is, whether this is a load bearing wall.
My apartment is number 39, the floor below me, number 35, has the exact same layout as my apartment but they have already removed the exact same section which I intend to remove. The apartments above mine (number 42 & 43) has an entirely different floor plan. As shown in this RP1122.
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This plan that I obtained from Landata is RP1122 (which I take to mean Registered Plan?). It seems to be prepared by a Surveyor (Culliver & Sim) in the 1960s. Is this actually a structural plan? As you can see, it shows a beam (marked by the blue arrow) which goes down the middle of my apartment. This beam is present in all apartments all the wall down from top floor to bottom floor. Is this meant to represent a solid beam or a hollow one? Coz all the services run down that area so it could be meaning to present hollow wall. Or it could be meaning to present a load bearing beam.
The "L" shaped wall in my apartment is not drawn in this RP1122. In fact, none of the walls in my apartment is drawn in RP1122, except this beam that goes down the middle.
Does this mean this bit of wall I intend to remove is not weight bearing?
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Browse Forums General Discussion  27 Aug 2007 663 Gold Member Re: help! any architect/engineer/builder here? load bearing wall 2Feb 22, 2008 8:31 am I would say it's not load bearing, columns normally do all the work in multistorey buildings, and beams run from the sides to centre core etc. That said, I'm not a structural engineer so don't use this as gospel.
Do the other apartments have this wall? If not, again, I'd say not load bearing. Re: help! any architect/engineer/builder here? load bearing wall 3Feb 22, 2008 8:38 am I'd put it in the risk factor.
Al's descritption sounds pretty valid, but are you prepared to pull out a wall that could potentially damage yours and other owners apartments - all damage to repaired at your cost. I assume you have a body corporate as well - so for me - I'd be getting and engineer to sign it off before I went ahead and ripped it out. But hey that's just me. I take lots of risks in all sorts of thing in life - but if this was my apartment - I'd not be going ahead without some physical inspection and written sign off by someone. Steve 31 May 2007 1,041 Member Re: help! any architect/engineer/builder here? load bearing wall 7Feb 22, 2008 9:47 am Stop being a bunch of girls! Get rid of the wall and see what happens.
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