On 22/03/2013 21:36, Jim Walsh wrote:

Hello all. My 1950s brick-built house has a light weight block wall,
on the first floor, separating the master bedroom from the bathroom.
There is no corresponding wall, on the ground floor, underneath. A
while back, when doing some work in the room below the bedroom and
bathroom, I made a hole in the ceiling to see how the wall above was
supported. I expected to find an RSJ or beam, but there was nothing.
I guessed that someone must have built the block wall directly onto
the floor boards; far from ideal, I would imagine, but it's been in

Its quite common with light weight walls... especially when running
across the joists.

place for quite a few years without incident (though it is not
original to the house). Recently, I had reason to remove the skirting
board that runs along the wall in question, in the bedroom. With the
skirting removed, I can now see the base of the wall and it appears
that the blocks are not sitting on the floor boards but are, in fact,
fractionally aboove the floor boards. Does anyone have any idea
what's going on here? To all intents and purposes, it appears that
the wall is floating. The span is about 3m, so I would be surprised
if it could all hold in place just from being tied in to brick walls
at either end. One notion that occurs to me is whether there could be
a supporting steel for the lowermost course and that the blocks are
shaped in some way that conceals it. Is this plausible? Are such
techniques well-known? Suggestions appreciated. I'm reluctant to do
too much exploratory excavation for fear of disrupting what might be
a fragile structure! Thanks, Jim.

Can you actually see under it, or could it simply be there is a bed of
mortar under it that means the blocks are spaced off the floor level a
little?




--
Cheers,

John.

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