stairs and loadbearing wall

[mr.gant]

:? I'm having a problem solving my situation; when going down my

basement stair on the fourth step before you touch the basement floor you

will hit your head on the support beam(girder). So what previous owners

done was cut at an angle on the support beam and that cause the floor to

sagg badly. If I repair the support beam, I will still have problem with the

head room coming down my stair. CAN SOMEBODY HELP ME?

[Vector]

Describe the support beam a little more (girder implies to me steel, but that doesn't follow with the rest of what you say). Is it a 2x10, or 2x8, or?

You might be able to replace it using a section of LVL that is smaller, but stronger than the existing support.

[mjpliv]

If your basement stairs are not "finished" and if you already have a generous stair tread depth it may be easier/cheaper to cut new stair stringers with each tread 3/8" to 1/2" shorter. It may be enough to give you clear headroom without altering the beam. You can also build a new set of stairs with one less rise as long as it doesn't make to stairs to steep to be confortable. This would elminate one entire tread. A set of stair stringers (3) and pine treads and risers is not all that expensive.

[Vector]

I'm reposting this that mr. gant PM'd me so that others (who know more than me) can respond:

The girder is 6"x6" beam that center in the home which the floor joists rest on

12" both way( my joist span north and south; the beam runs east and west in

the middle of my home). The beam maybe 8"x8" and the 3rd or 4th risers

going up the basement stairs headroom, if lvl will still cause you to tilt to a

side instead of walking down the stairs correctly.

Given the relatively short height of the existing beam, I doubt that LVL is the answer.

But I'm still confused, is the beam 6x6 or 8x8? Or is the column 8x8 and the beam 6x6, or?

Actually, now that I think about this, you could possibly replace this section of the beam with LVL still. If your floor joists are 2x10, you could span over the stairs with a section of 9.5" LVL set flush with the floor joists. You'd have to trim the joists back to slip it in (and have everything properly supported in the meantime), and then attach the joists to the section of LVL with joist hangers. I'm doing exactly this over my basement stairs, not so much because I need more headroom, but because the existing (2) 2x4s aren't up to the task, and a larger beam would cause headroom issues.

[mjpliv]

Carefull!

If you remove a section of the beam then the replacement beam would have to extend from post to post (whatever was holding up the original beam). Typically, in an older home, these posts are 8 to 10 feet apart.

[Vector]

Good point, and not one that I had thought about.

It's not applicable in my case (the "beam" is actually a 16" OC wall in my case), but in many houses it would be.

So that needs to be considered to see if my idea above would work.

[mr.gant]

My first thought was to eliminate the beam above stairs and span of that

existing beam with mirco and lvl. I will still have headroom problem. ( Put

columns properly where need it and use joist hangers on mirco.

[mjpliv]

Columns require footings, even on a concrete floor. 3 or 4 " of concrete will not support concentrated loads safely.

[mr.gant]

mjpliv, thanx for your help and advice, you shed some light on my issue.

I've got a long battle ahead of me. This is just one of my problems.

[mjpliv]

We will help where we can! :D