Knocking through kitchen wall - structural engineer advice

[Nameday]

In desperate need of some advice. I am in the UK and about to undertake a fairly significant renovation of my house. As part of this, I am having the wall between my kitchen and dining room removed. It is a load bearing wall (I think). The wall is roughly 3.5m long.

We have sent photos to a structural engineer and he thinks he can do it without a site visit. Is this normal? He has got our floorplan from Rightmove but the measurements on that are not 100% correct. Also, I was hoping someone could tell me what a good price would be. To calculate the size of the steel beams and pad stones, he has quoted £600. Any help would be appreciated.

If you have got any experience/advice about knocking through a kitchen wall and/or using a structural engineer, please share them with me as I have no clue 😂

I'd definitely expect a site visit. The floor plans only show so much and I would think a decent SE wouldn't want to risk being sued if he makes a calculation based on partial information.

I'd swerve this one. I recently paid £600 for site visit plus drawings and calculations (not a wall knock-through) but I think I got lucky. I was quoted much more by others - I'm in London.

Our steel calcs were done off the drawings (2 rsj’s ) it was £250 about 4 years ago. No pad stones but had to sit on engineering bricks.

Where are you based? We were quoted £600 or £700 for structural work to widen the kitchen and changes to the roof which require planning drawings. It doesn’t require knocking down a whole wall, just parts of it and replacing the steel.

have you had another quote?

Wow, I paid £2000 plus VAT 3 years ago. Perhaps I got ripped off! But yes we got several site visits for that.

We took out what used to be the external wall of our house and had a side extension. So we needed a steel to hold up what used to be the first floor corner of our house. The engineer advised that we had choices: we could either get a cheaper ‘football goal’ shape steel resting on pad stones, or we could get a more expensive ‘picture frame’ shape steel which was concreted in and would never shift. We went for that.

I’d have been a bit nervous about hiring someone who didn’t insist on a site visit.

I would never have a structural element to my house designed and specified by someone who had never set eyes on the building!
Really bad practice.
I would question whether their professional indemnity insurance even covered them for that!
You would likely could end up with it being completely uninsured.
Would they be getting building regs sign off for that!?
I work in retrofit and would insist on a site visit for lesser alterations than that.

Definitely need a site visit. I couldn't trust someone just working off plans. They need to thake measurements and check bricks/ walls.
We had similar plans, but after a detailed survey didn't do it. We were meant to have a cretin type of bricks due to age and build of house, but it turned out to be not the case. The gain in space v cost of the work was not worth it.

Site visit is a must, this would be a red flag to me! We had a structural engineer in who then did a drawing and calculations for the steel (similar job - knocking through load bearing wall between kitchen and diner), he charged us £425.

If the measurements from the floor plan are not 100% correct, make sure you send him the correct ones then.
The wall is load bearing if the is a wall above it, or the floor joists rest on it.
Why not post a sketch here, or the RM floor plan, for a MN variety of opinions.

Se should be interested in the condition of the wall and it's surrounds not just it's size. They can't assess that without a look-see

We've just paid a SE engineer £300 for his input (he didn't carry out a site visit). The work (creating a through lounge), cost us £2400 (we're in Greater London).

They will make conservative assumptions with spans and loadings if they haven't visited. They will need to assume the worst possible case situation for the weights and spans of the floors/roof. But in practice 3.5m is a small span for structural steel and even allowing for very conservative assumptions on loads and spans it won't make much difference to the size of the steel beam. The extra cost of the site visit to take a few kilos of the steelwork might not be cost effective. Sometimes factors such as ensuring it is the correct width to support the wall and the correct depth to fit in the floor zone can often govern the design. It's not ideal without the site visit but they may well find they just don't get the work when the cost of site visits is added in. If you want them to do a site visit, ask them how much extra it will add to their fees.