GS Renovation removes load bearing walls in Ware. A structural engineer we appoint establishes what the wall carries, then sizes the beam and the bearings. We prop the floor above, take the masonry out in stages and seat the steel before the props come out. Building control applications and inspections are coordinated, and the quotation is free and without obligation.
The buildings here are older than the national pattern
Age is the reason a wall survey in Ware cannot start from Victorian assumptions. The Ware Neighbourhood Plan records that over 60 per cent of the listed buildings in Identity Area 1 of the conservation area date from the 16th and 17th centuries or earlier. It cites Historic England advice that the national figure for buildings of that age is 34 per cent. An internal wall in a building of that age may be a frame, an infill panel, or a later insertion.
Across the town's listed buildings as a whole, the conservation area appraisal records 34 per cent from the 17th century and 21 per cent from the 19th. A further 19 per cent date from the 16th century, 13 per cent from the 18th and 9 per cent from the 15th. The 13th, 14th and 20th centuries are also represented. That spread is why the engineer's inspection comes before any price for the steel, not after it.
A brick front can stand in front of a timber frame
The face of a wall is not proof of what is behind it. The Ware Conservation Area Appraisal records that early timber framed buildings in the town have been refaced in later materials and given later facades. A later brick frontage in Ware can therefore stand in front of an earlier timber frame. That changes the whole exercise, because a frame carries load through posts and beams rather than through a continuous run of masonry.
Where that is a possibility we open up a small area first and let the engineer look before any design is fixed. Removing part of a historic frame is not the same job as cutting an opening in solid brickwork, and the fixings, the propping and the making good all differ. If the building is listed, listed building consent covers internal work as well as the outside, so the consent route is settled before the wall is touched.
A terrace can be one single building
A terrace in Ware can be a single structure rather than a row of separate houses. Nos. 3 to 12 Bluecoat Yard are Grade II star listed and described as a terrace of ten houses that is all one building. They were built as nurse cottages for the Bluecoat School around 1687 to 1689. Where that is the case, a wall inside one dwelling can be part of the structure of the whole range.
The construction reinforces the point. The Bluecoat Yard cottages are timber framed, plastered, pebbledashed and colourwashed, with an old tiled roof above a coved plastered eaves cornice. Each dwelling has one gabled casement dormer, there are five red brick chimneys, and the cottages are two storeys with attics. An engineer looking at a wall in a building like that has to look beyond the dwelling you own.
Malting floors were built for grain
A malting floor was designed to carry grain across a wide plate, and it reads nothing like a domestic floor. The Grade II listed Maltings and Kibes Lane Art Centre on New Road is a range of three large maltings of early 19th century date. It is built in yellow grey stock brickwork laid in Flemish bond and stands three storeys high. Each malting has three floors and three double kilns, with malt stores at the east end.
Kiln structures and deep floor plates change the design of an opening, and so does the fact that a converted building may already have been altered once before you arrive. We ask for whatever drawings survive from the conversion. Where none exist, the engineer works from opening up instead. That is slower at the start and much faster once demolition begins.
- Padstones and correct bearing at each end of the opening
- Nib walls and piers formed where the engineer requires them
- Electrics, pipework and radiators diverted out of the wall
- Structural engineer's calculations arranged and followed
- Temporary propping, needling and staged demolition
Trusted Load-Bearing Wall Removal in Ware
Ware homeowners choose GS Renovation because we survey and open up before we commit to a price, which matters in buildings of this age. The engineer we appoint decides what the wall carries and what replaces it, and we build to that. Work is staged so the floor above is supported at every point, we are fully insured, and building control applications and inspections are coordinated for you.
- Plastering, skirting and making good included in the price
- Joist ends properly supported once the masonry is out
- Registered in England, Companies House no. 14611254
- Honest updates if a date or a detail has to move
- Party Wall notices handled where the opening reaches a shared wall
- Photographs kept at each stage for your records