Knocking down internal wall advice

[Renonewbie1]

We want to knock down an internal wall, unsure if it’s structural - there’s nothing above it and my builder has said he’s pretty sure it’s not after some investigations, but we should check with an SE.

The holes are already in the ceiling, so we just need someone to have a look and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ basically. We’ve just been quoted £500 just for an SE to look and write a paragraph on whether it can come down, this is over double what we paid to have beam calcs done for another internal wall.

Does the builder actually need a full document to say the wall can come down?
Do we need proof for building regs?

I’ll go back to my original SE to have a look and confirm if we don’t need a full document.

As no-one's replied, I will, although I'm no expert.
When we knocked down a wall, we exposed the whole area and called a surveyor to confirm it wasn't load bearing. This was because:

1. it's not always obvious - even though we were sure, we're not experts.
2. when we eventually come to sell, we wanted paperwork in case the buyer wanted proof. also 3) might there be insurance issues if there was any damage caused by your builders? As the wall is exposed, there's very little work for the surveyor. I'd phone around to get other quotes. We paid £200 at the time, and I got the surveyor from randomly phoning the closest person from a list on the professional website. He just popped round, poked about for a short time, and confirmed in writing that it was ok.

I also rang building regs, and they said that if it wasn't load bearing, we didn't need regs.

That's about what I paid for a SE although in my case we knew we needed to have some advice about the reinforcements required to remove part of a wall.
Your builder will not take the risk here, so if anything goes wrong that's on you. Your builder doesn't need a fancy written document but is basically telling you that he's not 100pc sure and so you need to check. So you need to get it checked IMHO.

I will be getting it checked my an SE, my more affordable SE won’t provide formal documents though, will just confirm if it is structural or not.
The more expensive SE will provide a paragraph about whether it is structural or not - so it’s just whether we need that formal paragraph or not.
I have just checked the more costly SEs terms, and they’ll only look from floor level for the £400, so wouldn’t even look in the holes the builder has made in the ceiling by the sounds of it!

Sounds like your less formal SE would be fine then

I would be a bit worried about not having written confirmation when you come to sell. But maybe I'm over cautious. I would ring round some more, as it still sounds very expensive, but I guess it depends on your area. Are you very near London?

@PreFabBroadBean we’ll be getting building regs to sign off on the load bearing wall, so I’m hoping they might sign off on both. We’re in Warwickshire, £400 is extortionate for what they’ve quoted for though, dread to think how much a beam calc would be from them!

You could phone your local building regs people to see what they say about that. Ours are very helpful in explaining things.

Re surveyors, we're right near London, so it does seem v expensive for Warwickshire. We went with a one-man band, not with a company, which is perhaps why he was cheaper. He was happy to pop by on his way to lunch!