How To Identify Load-Bearing Walls

Home renovation projects can be exciting and invigorating—you get the chance to transform your home and design a space to your exact specifications. But if you want to reorganize the floor plan of your home to add more space, you may need to identify load-bearing walls.

Before you go in swinging with a sledgehammer, it’s important to know where your load-bearing walls are, what they’re supporting, and how to best navigate removing them.

This guide covers everything you need to know to identify and remove load-bearing walls.

Load-bearing walls, also called support walls or bearing walls, support the roof structure or the floor's weight. They are essentially the bones of your home, holding the home's structure in place and distributing the weight so that it spreads evenly across the foundation.

A non-load-bearing wall, or partition wall, doesn't hold up your home's weight, so it can be removed without compromising the overall structure. When remodeling your home, you can easily make changes to non-load-bearing walls, but you need to be careful when planning to remove load-bearing walls.

If you remove a load-bearing wall without adding additional support elsewhere, you could have a disaster on your hands. Load-bearing walls are essential to keep your house standing and structurally sound. They hold the weight of everything above them, including floors and roofs. They also help distribute the weight of the house evenly, reducing weight and stress on individual structural components and help protect your home against external forces.

If you remove a load-bearing wall without the proper precautions, you could be in for serious consequences, including:

• Structural collapse: The biggest risk you run is the partial or total collapse of the house.

• Sagging floors and ceilings: Without support from load-bearing walls, floors and ceilings can sag or bow.

• Cracks in walls and ceilings: When a house's structural load is improperly redistributed, ceilings and walls can develop cracks.

• Sticking doors and windows: Load-bearing walls help keep houses square. When you remove them, your door and window frames can shift, making it harder to open and close doors and windows.

• Less stability: Removing load-bearing walls can make your home less resistant to environmental factors like wind or earthquakes.

Increased repair costs: The cost to fix issues caused by an improperly removed load-bearing wall can quickly add up — potentially costing you more in the long run than it would have cost to hire a contractor or subcontractor to identify your load-bearing walls in the first place. 

Now that we know how important load-bearing walls are, we can look at the different ways you can identify them. While most exterior walls are load-bearing, it can be challenging to determine which interior walls are also load-bearing.

Here are some common ways to identify load-bearing walls:

Floor joists are the long wooden boards that run the length of your floor. In the basement, these boards support the first floor. If you are on the ground floor, these boards run along the ceiling to support the second floor.

Floor joists run perpendicular to load-bearing walls. If you are in an unfinished home, these floor joists are easy to recognize. On a finished house, floor joists are usually hidden behind drywall. If the house is finished, your best bet is to look in the basement to determine which walls are load-bearing.

If you can easily get to your foundation, this is typically the quickest way to determine load-bearing walls. In your basement or crawlspace, you'll want to look for signs of load-bearing walls, including:

• Beams or columns that directly go into your concrete foundation

• Beams or columns that lead directly to a wall above

• Floor joists on the basement ceiling that run perpendicular to a basement wall

In each of these cases, the walls above them or those they connect to are generally load-bearing walls.

Another way to identify load-bearing walls is to look in your attic. The attic can give you an overall view of the house's weight distribution. Most attics are unfinished or partially unfinished, making it easier to identify load-bearing walls.

When doing a major home renovation, 42% of US homeowners hired construction professionals to help with their projects. And 72% of those homeowners sought help from a general contractor. If you are thinking of modifying or removing a load-bearing wall, you'll want to hire a structural engineer or a contractor with extensive structural knowledge and experience.

A structural engineer can help you identify your load-bearing walls and evaluate your remodeling plans to ensure the project won't compromise your home. They can also improve or modify your plan to make it more efficient and help you save money.

A general contractor can help you complete the remodeling project. Consulting with professionals also ensures that you follow building codes and file the proper permits for the project. This is important for selling your home because any remodeling work will need to meet safety codes and standards.

Do you need professional help identifying your load-bearing walls? Contact My Site Plan to draw up a site plan that will detail your home's structural layout.

If you are planning to remodel, it's never a bad idea to seek professional help and advice. Even if you are doing the remodeling project yourself, you should always consult a professional about load-bearing walls and whether the remodel will affect your home's structural integrity. 

However, if you’re a homeowner with extensive DIY or construction knowledge, you could try removing a load-bearing wall on your own. When in doubt, always seek professional help.

Removing a load-bearing wall could catastrophically affect the structural integrity of a residential structure. So, you should contact your local building office department or permitting authority before proceeding.

They may ask you to submit a detailed floor plan, and you may be required to submit schematics or plans drawn and approved by an engineer or architect.

After getting permission from the local municipality, you’ll need to put up temporary walls or supports. These supports need to be close enough to the load-bearing walls to support the weight they’re holding up but far enough away from them to not interfere with the demolition work.

Gravity will always be working against you once the original load-bearing walls are removed. And while you want to work quickly, you also want to work carefully to avoid making any mistakes that will compromise the house's structural integrity.

You will then have to remove the load-bearing walls using various construction techniques.

Remember, this is just a basic guide for removing load-bearing walls. Always consult with contracting experts before attempting to do it yourself.

When remodeling your home, use extreme caution when identifying or removing a load-bearing wall. Changing a load-bearing wall is risky because it can severely damage your home. If you need to alter a load-bearing wall, hire a professional who has the necessary experience and will maintain your home's structural safety.

For a site plan detailing the structural elements of your home, My Site Plan can help. Our experienced CAD designers can create a non-certified site plan for your next remodeling project.

Contact My Site Plan to learn more about how we can help with your next remodeling or renovation project.