Load bearing wall with nothing under it??

I am removing a wall in my kitchen/living room. As you can see in the pics, rafters do end on top of this wall. But half the wall is just resting on 1/2” subfloor. How is this possible?? The red line is how the wall runs in the basement. You can see that directly below where those rafters are resting on the wall, there is a cold air return. It is literally resting
on 1/2” ply. The floor joists turn at the wall in the basement (redline) and begin to run parallel to the wall at that point. I can’t run a beam
to the outside wall and I can’t put a post in with nothing under it..
bi-level hip roof




There is nothing supporting under the blue line

 

Well first off, you can't remove that wall, your ceiling joists anre not continuous, they lap on top of that wall.

And secondly, the floor joists pick up the load from that wall.

Do you have a building permit?

 

What exactly is your plan?

 

Can’t remove the wall because joists are
not continuous? Isn’t that why people put in beams and joist hangers? There has to be a way right?? Maybe a steel beam in floor that could support all
the way up?
I am going to call an engineer. The original post was just to find out what is supporting the load NOW.
Ill post the answer incase anyone is interested.

 

As I said, the floor joists currently pick up the ceiling joist load under that wall. In your basement, the load bearing walls run perpendicular to your floor joists. Not parallel to them. And its not a great photo but judging by the way the plywood on the floor runs, it looks like your floor joists run one way on the left side of the kitchen and the opposite way where your blue line is.

Your floor joists change direction at your red dishwasher line. Just look at the way the plywood is oriented. So the wall the red dishwasher line represents is only a load bearing wall for everything left of that wall. Everything right of that line has load bearing walls that are perpendicular to it. Those perpendicular walls are load bearing for the joists that are on the right side of the dishwasher. An example would be walls or beams in the basement parallel to your blue line.

 

Yes…

Yellow line is here joists change direction. I can’t figure out what is supporting the load at the 90


it is over open space in the basement
(sleeper…I didn’t glue the new subfloor! 👍 )



not sure if this is helpful but this is on top of the 90 ..

 

Oh, OK. I've got the floor joist directions backward, sorry. Your last pictures clear it up. That wall shouldn't just be sitting on plywood... there ought to be some horizontal blocking between those joists that distribute the load to the adjacent joists left and right of the wall you want to remove. And maybe there was (once) but the hvac guy removed it. Reach into those cold air returns. Is there anything perpendicular between joists?

I think some guys back in the day thought it was okay to just set a wall on subfloor because the ceiling load in a 1 story house is not as great as a floor load would be.

 

Ex brother-in-law just left. He is an engineer. The original wall went all the way to exterior. It was partially removed and a beam put in. New beam is resting on that 90. There is NOTHING under that 90 except plywood. Hence the low spot there. I’m going to open up the floor and girder (triple up) the floor joist that is right next to that point load. I am then going to install a large post that will need to support 2 LVLs side by side and rest on the beefed up floor joist. The pic shows where new post will sit and where current joist is running.

It won’t be the right way but it will work. The new joists will run to exterior wall and load wall not just sistered. New post will be 4x6 or 4x8 cover

.

 

The BIL engineer called me the next morning and had a different approach. Now going to girder 2 joists and run support between them. Terrible pic shows what I mean. Opening up the floor in the next few days. I’ll post pics.

 

That's what I suggested in post 7. He must think there is a lot of load if he also wants you to sister the joists. Seems unnecessary if you are putting posts in. Is the roof kicked down to that wall?

 

Also, a double 2x10 that was carrying much of floor was cut almost all the way through when the basement was finished. This has gotten a little nuts. LVLs going in the floor and ceiling.

Right down the middle is where old wall was.

 

Art Linkletter should pen a book entitled "Plumbers and HVAC Contractors Do the Darndest Things". A variation on "Kids Do the Darndest Things".