Exterior Wall support?

[Greg R]

I have a family room with 72" french door going out to a 14' x 14' 3 seasons room. I would like to open the wall up to the entire width of 14' to make the family room much larger. Can anyone help me as far as advise on supporting the exterior wall once the opening is made. It is a 2 story colonial with exterior bedroom wall above. I was contemplating a steel I-beam but I don't know if that is too extreme? Thanks in advance!

Greg

[Rich]

Honestly I would pay the money for an engineer to review. A 14' opening with 2 stories above it is not a typical thing in most homes. I could say a 5.25" X 16" glulam for a 16' garage door opening would work but that doesn't account for 2 stories above it.

[Greg R]

Honestly I would pay the money for an engineer to review. A 14' opening with 2 stories above it is not a typical thing in most homes. I could say a 5.25" X 16" glulam for a 16' garage door opening would work but that doesn't account for 2 stories above it.Thanks Rich! I think I must have explained wrong. It is a 2 story colonial with the proposed opening on the 1st of 2 levels. There is only one story above! Do you think the glulam would be suficient?

[Rich]

I was just looking at www.trusjoist.com 's specification guide for glulams and for a home that is 36' wide holding a floor load and roof load (typical loads) I would probably use just what I said above - 5.25" x 16" Parallam PSL header.
The width of the house comes into play because the header holds half the houses' floor load - that's the only reason I mentioned the house width.

[Sophist]

Rich is right, you don't only have to consider the load of the wall and roof above that opening but 1/2 the load from the floor joists that are carried by that lintel.

One alternative that you may want to consider is to break the 14' span into 2 7' by using a 6"x6" post. You still get the same effect but then your lintel can be a 3 ply 2"x8" or 2"x10" depending on the code for your area.

You would have to make sure the load from that post is trandfered to the foundation.

Just a thuought on an alternative.

[roger g]

One thing about using steel is that the depth of the beam is usually less than the depth of comparible timber. It depends on how much headroom you have.
You have to build an interior wall (tempororary) adjacent to your present doors to support everything above it until you can open up a load bearing wall.

roger