Owning your own home

Someone lives there!!!

That's cheap compared to what I paid!

Yeah, that's cool. Some of them need to up their front door game though.

There's a reason that white is traditionally popular to try and get as much light to reflect in as possible. I just associate grey / black with showy renos that are trying to be different for the sake of it.

Where I grew up orange was popular (showed the houses owned by the local toff).

That article was done in 2017 so im guessing they have been trying to sell it for years.

A lot of money for the condition its in, would be a class house if you had the money.

Yeah orange seems a bit much too... Ours are painted white and we plan to get new downstairs rear windows / door this year, so I have been going over this in my mind - I can repaint the upstairs ones to match but the new door / window would be alu so want to choose what we'll be happy with in the future! Which is hard to decide tbh. Orange is prob a bit too jazzy for us

midhurst?

If it's a standard job, you can just use an online calculator. All the engineer will do is put the measurements into a similar calculator, they don't actually break out their pencilcase.

We did it online and it was accepted by building control, and the house didn't fall down. Builder was happy to double check measurements etc for free.

We used this one:
https://www.beamcalculation.co.uk/

yarp

Make sure that includes all the calculations to support any building control.

@sumo the fee you've been quoted is so incredibly cheap that it'll all get used up if for example the structural engineer needs to have a meeting with your architect for any reason. Read the conditions to see what's excluded and included, e.g. as mentioned above are they going to charge extra for doing stuff that you need in order to finish the project. The quote would be cheap even for a single visit with input limited to verbal advice only

If it's a standard job

Yes but determining whether it's a standard job is part of the service that a (suitably skilled) engineer can provide, using lots of experience and (presumably) peer review from their colleagues

It's just for the specs of the beam we need, no architectural drawings

Worth discussing with the engineer how changes will be dealt with. E.g. architect specifies opening size, engineer says it can't be done without [thing]. So now you have to pay architect to do more work, then pay engineer again to redo their bit.

Architect and engineer involved will be able to tell you more but my point is that the engineer fee is not going to get lower, and could quite reasonably go up, perhaps up to an order of magnitude more if weird or unexpected stuff comes up.

Probably going to be selling my parents home in the next few months. It is in typical old folks state. Presumably just empty it completely and not worth any major decorating?
Pure suburbia! Lots of net curtains.

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Honestly we weren't planning on getting an architect involved. It's a the wall between our kitchen and dining room, just putting a ~1.7m RSJ in then knocking through the wall below.

Cool, I don't know what's necessary for building control where you are so can't comment on the need for drawings, plans etc but in Scotland I'd expect you to need existing and proposed drawings to get building warrant, and they'd need to show stuff that engineer beam spec isn't going to cover. Maybe speak to the local authority building control dept. to confirm the required documents.

I think you're right. I haven't look in to how much of it will need building control just yet.

Where in the suburbs is it? If it's in London like Ealing or leytonstone or Richmond or similar then it might be worth sprucing it up a bit. If it's teeside or Middlesbrough then perhaps not so much.

I wouldn’t empty it. Folk have no imagination when it comes to judging room sizes and in photos empty rooms give no sense of scale.

Clear all the personal bits but leave in beds, sofas and what not. So long as they look half tidy.

Yeah we didn't need any drawings for building control beyond what the online calculator did. Would have felt shafted if I'd paid for an engineer to produce this.

Feel like cupcakes and I are possibly talking at cross purposes. Surely the vast majority of people knocking through don't get an architect in, that would be extreme overkill.

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• Steel_Beam_Calculations_ref_99830.pdf

Really appreciate the kind words earlier. I would not have bought my own gaff were it not for this thread. It's genuinely making a difference to people's lives.

Speaking of difference, what're people paying for Building Survey / Homebuyers Reports?

I used to use Gold Crest who always seemed pretty reasonable but they've quoted me £1122 including the valuation! Is that normal now?

Morden, southern end of the northern line. So debatable if above Middlesbrough

Don’t the beam calculators require live loads and dead loads as inputs?

If you know those values, alongside spans etc then it’s basically a lookup table and if between sizes, then size up.

ABCs for a Structural Engineer, but easy to misunderstand and get wrong for the everyman (no offence intended).

I had mine done around 6 months ago, so the market might've changed a little. But I paid £525, so that seems steep to me!