GS Renovation installs RSJs and steel beams in Ware, working to calculations produced by a structural engineer we appoint. We prop the floor first, take the masonry out in stages, then seat the beam on padstones sized by the engineer. Building control applications and inspections are coordinated for you, and quotations are free and without obligation.
Getting a steel beam into the historic core
Access is the first thing to settle on a steel job in the older part of Ware. The Ware Neighbourhood Plan records that the historic core is recognisable for its narrow streets, burgage plots and yards, and that original cobbled road surfacing still exists in parts. That layout decides how a beam reaches the opening. It also decides whether a single long section can be carried in at all, or whether the engineer needs to design the opening around two shorter beams bolted together.
We survey the route before the beam is ordered, not after it arrives on a lorry. That covers the gateway, the passage width, the turning point inside the house and the surface the beam is rolled across. Where cobbled surfacing is present it is protected and the load is spread. Getting this wrong is expensive, because a steel that cannot be delivered has to be recut and refabricated.
What the bearings actually sit on
The beam sits on padstones in the existing walls rather than on the bedrock, but the ground still matters to the engineer. The British Geological Survey maps the bedrock beneath Ware as the Lewes Nodular Chalk Formation and the Seaford Chalk Formation, recorded as undifferentiated chalk. All 25 street locations sampled across the town return the same chalk bedrock. Chalk is a competent bearing stratum, which is one reason an engineer may accept an existing footing for a new point load.
A steel beam changes how load reaches the ground. A wall spreads its load along its length. A beam collects that load and delivers it at two points instead. The engineer checks whether the masonry and the footing under each bearing can take that concentration, then specifies a padstone, a pier or a new pad foundation. We build what the calculations say, and we do not substitute a smaller padstone to save a course of brickwork.
Beams in converted malting buildings
A malting was not built to house proportions, so a beam inside one is a different design problem. South Maltings on Watton Road is Grade II listed and dates from around the late 1840s. It is built of Flemish bond yellow stock brick, with weatherboarded timber framed east and west ends under a pantile roof with gabled ends. A wall that is brick at one end of a building and timber framed at the other will not accept the same bearing detail throughout.
A building of this type may already have been restrained during its working life. The south range of the New Road maltings, converted to an art centre, carries cast iron circular tie plates marked Chas. Wells Ware. Those plates are evidence that the building was tied and restrained while it was still working. Cutting a new opening in a building that is already tied is work for the engineer to specify in full, including what happens to the tie, before anything is broken out.
Who inspects the steelwork
Building control for Ware is delivered by Hertfordshire Building Control Limited on behalf of East Herts District Council. East Herts states that the company is owned by East Herts Council along with seven other Hertfordshire local authorities. It provides plans assessments and site inspections, and applications can be submitted online through the Hertfordshire Building Control Planning Portal. Its operations team can be reached on 01438 879990.
We make the application and book the inspections as part of the job. The critical visit is the one taken while the beam is seated and the bearings are still open to view. Nothing is boxed in, boarded or plastered over a bearing before it has been seen, because uncovering it afterwards costs time and money. The completion paperwork is the document a buyer's solicitor asks for later.
- Temporary propping and staged, controlled demolition
- Steel columns, base plates and bolted connections
- Goalpost frames where two walls meet at a corner
- Bearing checks into party walls and shared masonry
- Steel delivered cut, drilled and primed to the engineer's schedule
The GS Renovation Difference in Ware
Homeowners in Ware choose GS Renovation because the steel goes in to a structural engineer's calculations, never to a rule of thumb. We appoint the engineer, prop before we cut, and leave the bearings open until building control has inspected them. We are fully insured, you deal with one point of contact from survey to sign off, and we are rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder.
- Neighbours given notice before the noisy stages
- Making good and plastering priced in, not treated as an extra
- High-density concrete padstones bedded at every bearing
- Our own trades on site rather than a chain of subcontractors
- Straight advice on what is and is not worth spending money on
- Restricted London access planned before the steel arrives