header spans

[ITE]

I need to make a 10' opening span in an interior load bearing wall. It runs down the center of the house. the house is 1 floor and basement ranch style with gable roof. the wall is supported underneath in the basement by a girder made up of 3- 2"x8"s with a post every 6-8 feet suporting it. I looked in the IRC code book and it appears that 3-2"x12" will work for this. Is this correct? If I place a post in the center of the span, at 5' does this then count as 2- 5' spans and then it would be ok to use 2-2"x8"s ? Could a truss header be used for this? My concern is with the extra width of the wall when using built up headers.

thanks

[bkrahmer]

My center interior load bearing wall has two 5' openings flanking a 4' opening. I used 2x6 box headers (u-shaped) for all three. They seem perfectly fine. I don't have any code books, but from a realists point of view, that's all you need. If I wanted a 10' clear span, I would use a Parallam of the appropriate size.

Now that I've said all that, I'm confused. You say the wall is load-bearing, but there is no floor above. What does the wall support, the roof? That doesn't seem possible, though... hmm. I must be missing something.

[ITE]

yes, the wall only supports the ceiling and roof. the ceiling joists are overlaped on top of the wall, they dont span from exterior wall to exterior wall. so the wall supports one end of each ceiling joist. the house has a split floor plan with the wall in question running down the center of the house parallel with the ridge.

thanks for your help


oops, I said ceiling and roof, I just mean ceiling. gotta get more sleep.

[bkrahmer]

Ok, just ceiling. That makes sense. That is a very small load. If I wanted to keep it to the width of a 2x4, I would use two 2x8's with a piece of plywood or OSB and make a sandwich-type header. You could also use 2x10's or 2x12's and skip the cripples, depending upon what height you want the opening to be.

[ITE]

thanks for the info. I appreciate it.