On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 19:51:39 -0400, "William Pounds"
wrote:

I'm planning on removing a load bearing wall, so I've been doing some
preliminary investigation. Don't worry I'll have an engineer when I can find
one willing to do a small job.

The wall in question is about 16' and is located on the main floor of a two
story house. The basement has a 20' steel beam (W10x30) in the same
location. I was concerned that placing the end post of the upstairs beam 4'
from the end of the basement beam would stress the steel beam too much. So I
plugged the numbers (1200 * 20 vs 1200 * 4 + 9600 + 9600) into a couple of
beam programs and discovered that the deflection numbers actually decreased.
I must be missing something here?

Concentrating the loads near the ends of the basement beam reduces
that beam's deflections.

Brian W