When a remodel changes the load path

So I get this call all the time. Hey, my floor has a little bounce to it and even a layman can sometimes tell there used to be a wall here. There's usually signs, right? You have these little two foot turnarounds or it goes from a dining room to a kitchen and there's no wall in an older house. What that means usually is that somebody has cut out a wall or cut through some things, cut through some roof framing. Maybe they needed to put in some additional plumbing or electric circuits from MEP and it's held up so far. And that's what the contractor will say. Maybe that's even what the title company will say. But that's not an engineering opinion. It needs to be looked at. Your house should not bounce. You should not be able to notice it deflect under your feet as you walk. All right. So what are these things telling you? Well, a house has a load path, right? And so when you're walking on the floor it goes to your actual surface, your floor surface, goes to joists and then those go to beams which go to posts which go all the way down to the foundation and to the ground. Well, often when somebody renovates a house they might pull out a wall and then they, and when they pull out the wall they have a beam, right? And those posts come down from the beam. But sometimes what's overlooked is where do those posts go? So underneath the posts sometimes they're just sitting on like the floor but they need more posts to go all the way to the ground. That's actually pretty common. We call those floating posts or a floating floor or a floating wall is when there's a wall or a post that's supposed to go all the way to the ground but it doesn't. And the house has held up but it's starting to sag. And after a few years that sag is going to start to kind of exacerbate itself, right? So you think about a lever. If you have a deflection in the floor and it starts to go down more and more then it creates a larger force. So do this. Stop your drywall if you're in the middle of a renovation and take pictures. Take measurements of the actual size of your wall framing or of your post. You want to know if it's just two 2x4s that are sistered together for a post to make a 4x4 post or you want to know if it's an actual 6x6 post. So we need the sizes. We also need the spacing. If you don't stop the drywall then we'll have to cut away a little bit in order to see what's going on. So you want to photograph every element that's new or being used in a new way. And that being used in a new way is an important aspect too. Another case that's very common is when people try to create more space in their house by using their attic space. But the attic space just has ceiling ties. So when you're up in the attic you're looking down you see that floor, right? That those are usually very long 2x4s and those are called ceiling ties. They're only meant to carry like a 3-5 pounds per square foot weight. If you just cover over that with plywood and put a bed and a couple of people on that bed you're going to find yourself on the next floor down. So even though the members always been there and maybe there's even been a floor there like in an attic, if it's being used in a new way that's important. Alright, So when you're doing that recording, documentation, just get that measuring tape in the shot. Ask the contractor in writing if this was an engineered change or maybe the homeowner just did it themselves. And if the answer is silence, that's evidence either way. So if you own a building, an apartment building for example, this same thing shows up as a tenant improvement that took out a wall that nobody checked or noticed. It's the same letter, bigger numbers and your carrier is going to ask for it. So get that engineer out there. If it's your house and a wall came out but nobody showed you a stamped drawing, assume nobody did a stamped drawing. There were no calcs there. It was just, "Oh, I don't... You'd be surprised how often I see people say, "Well, I just took something out one or two feet at a time and it stayed up, so I'm guessing it's okay." Yeah, that's not engineering just because it's still standing.