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Frost55

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Hi. My wife wants to remove the wall that separates the kitchen and dining room. It's about 8 feet long. The house is a 4 level back split. About 20 year's old. Under the wall in the basement the wall runs the same way as the floor joints, actually in between 2 of them. Above the wall is the attic where the trusses run perpendicularly to the wall. Is there any way this could be a bearing wall, thanks
 
Ya the wall is sitting on the wafer board flooring , if that's what it's called :)
I can see the spikes they pinned it down with coming through the floor. There's a cold air return going up into the wall too. Thanks
 
Advantech osb flooring is usually a good floor and from the under side you should be able to read how thick it is.
 
is the attic where the trusses run perpendicularly to the wall.
Is this wall and the floor underneath it helping hold up the attic floor? Maybe it was put there to hide a problem?

If there is no gap between the top of this wall's framing and the underside of the attic floor I'd be careful. A non-load-bearing partition should be a sliding fit vertically, not an interference fit.
 
Is this wall and the floor underneath it helping hold up the attic floor? Maybe it was put there to hide a problem?

If there is no gap between the top of this wall's framing and the underside of the attic floor I'd be careful. A non-load-bearing partition should be a sliding fit vertically, not an interference fit.

Truses load the waite on the outside wall in most cases and when they land on an interior wall the load would go straight down to a load bearing wall or post in the basement.
 
There's no floor in the attic, just roof trusses and insulation. The wall just sits on the osb flooring so I don't think it would be holding up the roof trusses?You said it might be there to hide a problem, there is no problem it's a wall in between the kitchen and dining room :)
 
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I have a long span for the bottom horiz members of my roof trusses in one large room and so there is a crack in the ceiling drywall that opens and closes with time as these boards sag.
A wall there won't look good so sometime I'll go up there and try to reinforce those two-bys.
I'd still look for a gap at the top of the wall before messing with it. :D It can't hurt, and if there is no gap the studs may be under compression which means they are bearing some load.
Another option would be to remove every other stud and see what happens.
 
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I have a long span for the bottom horiz members of my roof trusses in one large room and so there is a crack in the ceiling drywall that opens and closes with time as these boards sag.
A wall there won't look good so sometime I'll go up there and try to reinforce those two-bys.
I'd still look for a gap at the top of the wall before messing with it. :D It can't hurt, and if there is no gap the studs may be under compression which means they are bearing some load.
Another option would be to remove every other stud and see what happens.

In fact when you have a snow load on the roof the ceiling member of the trusses will lift up away from non bearing walls and no I can not explain why.
 
Without working out all the tensile and compressive forces in a truss (like I used to have to do in my Statics course) they shouldn't be doing that.
It probably depends on the truss design.

IIRC, this is what's above that ceiling
http://www.google.com/search?q=trus...www.rltruss.com%2Ftrusseducation.html;775;582

BTW, if you want to see how out-of-shape you are, navigate around that attic space. You will lose points if you get a roofing nail in your scalp.
 
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