The support above
your opening
was never checked.
This is the single most common unresolved item in a London survey, and it is not because anything looks wrong. It is because a surveyor physically cannot see above a closed opening.
The surveyor could not
see, so they hedged.
Across the survey reports we work from, one item shows up more than any other: support above an altered opening could not be verified. It appears for knocked through walls, widened doorways, removed chimney breasts, new windows, and openings formed for extensions.
It is important to understand that this is not usually a finding of a defect. It is a statement about the limits of a visual inspection. Once an opening has been plastered and decorated, whatever is carrying the load above it is buried. The surveyor cannot see it, cannot test it, and is not permitted to guess, so the report records that it could not be confirmed.
The frustration for buyers is that this reads like a warning without telling you whether there is a problem. The honest position is that most alterations were done properly and a smaller number were not, and the only way to know which you have is to look.
The reason it matters more than it sounds: if support is genuinely absent or inadequate, the load is being carried by masonry that was never designed to carry it. That is not always dramatic, but it does not improve with time and it will be raised again by the next buyer's surveyor.
Several tonnes of brick
resting on nothing.
The most serious version of this is a chimney breast removed at ground or first floor with the stack above left in place. People do this to gain room space and it is entirely legitimate, but the masonry above has to be picked up and carried.
The correct solution is either a steel beam spanning across to the walls either side, or gallows brackets bolted into the flanking masonry to support the remaining breast. Both need to be designed for the actual load rather than assumed.
What surveyors find, and write up, is breasts removed with no visible support at all, or with brackets that are undersized or fixed into masonry that cannot take them. The phrasing tends to be that the support is inadequate and does not comply with current Building Regulations, and that a metal beam spanning across would be expected.
This is a different customer from someone planning a removal. If you have just bought a house where it was already done, badly, you are not choosing to do work, you are inheriting it.
Look first, then
design, then build.
The sequence is the same whichever opening is involved. First, open up a small area to see what is actually there. That is a modest, repairable intervention and it converts an unknown into a known.
Second, if support is missing or inadequate, a structural engineer calculates what is needed for the span and the load above. That calculation is what makes the work signed off rather than assumed, and it is what you will want to hand to a future buyer.
Third, the work itself: needling and propping to take the load temporarily, installing the lintel, steel beam or brackets, packing and pinning it properly so the load transfers, then making good the plaster and decoration.
The paperwork is worth handling at the same time. Where the original alteration was never signed off, a regularisation application to the local authority puts it right on the record. That is often the thing that actually matters at resale, because the next buyer's solicitor will ask.
Because we cover the plastering and decorating as well as the structural work, the making good is not a separate job you have to arrange afterwards.
Signs worth
looking for.
Look above wide openings for a sag in the line of the ceiling or a dip in the plaster. A straight edge held up to the ceiling shows it quickly.
Look for cracking at the top corners of an opening, particularly diagonal cracks running upwards and outwards, which is the classic signature of a lintel that is deflecting or absent.
Where a chimney breast has been removed, go up to the floor above and check that the breast is still there. If it is present upstairs and gone downstairs, something is carrying it, and it is worth knowing what.
Doors that will not close squarely in a frame that was previously fine can indicate movement above the opening. None of these are proof, and all of them are reasons to look properly rather than to worry.
Questions we get
asked most.
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Areas we cover.
We take lintel and steel beam work across all 32 London boroughs. Most of our work is in west London, in Shepherd's Bush, Hammersmith, Fulham, Kensington, Chiswick and White City, and in south west London, in Putney, Wandsworth and Wimbledon. We also work in south east London, in Greenwich, Blackheath and Lewisham.
If your property is outside these areas, call us anyway. We travel across London and will tell you honestly if a job is too far to price properly.