Alexander Road, London Colney
Type of project
A large open plan kitchen extension required a last minute steel beam check, in order to progress works on a client's London Colney home.
Overview
It’s not often that in your job you get called in to save the day like a knight in shinning armour. But this seems to happen all too often for us domestic and residential Structural Engineers.
The client and home owner for this project had already organised all they needed from their Structural Engineer, Builder and Architect… unfortunately though, the Building Control Officer felt that a second opinion was needed for the main roof steel; which was responsible for supporting all the new roof and it’s exceedingly heavy roof lights.
We were called in to provide an engineers calculation for the offending steel beam at the last moment, as the ceiling was about to be closed in. The survey and calculation only took us a few hours; but when we delivered the good news it came with a small warning attached…
The beam indeed was capable of holding up the load, but the beam’s deflection was on it’s absolute limit. This in turn meant that they may experience a few more cracks in the plasterboard ceiling than usual. A year later we returned to find that the cracking was minimal and the client very happy with the results.
Services included
Retrospective steel beam design, Regularised Building Regulations Approval, structural engineering, last minute call out.
Special considerations
Time critical, mid-project, assessment of another Structural Engineers calculations.
Area
London Colney, Hertfordshire
