Load-bearing wall

In a building, some walls just divide rooms and others hold the building up. In most newer buildings in Greece the structure is reinforced concrete: columns, beams, slabs and shear walls. The brick walls between them are usually infill wallsInfill wallA brick wall that fills the gap between columns, beams and slabs. It divides rooms, but it isn't built to hold the building up. that carry no load. In old stone or brick houses, though, the walls themselves carry the floors and the roof.

It is not always easy to tell by eye which wall is load-bearing. Thickness, position, material and the building's drawings give clues, but only an engineer can say for certain.

If a renovation means opening a doorway, widening an opening or removing a wall, the first step is to establish whether that wall carries a load. Nothing is done to structural elements without a structural designStructural designAn engineer's study that checks whether a building can take a change, such as an opening in a load-bearing wall, and sets out how it is done and how it is strengthened. and the required permit, and columns and beams are never cut into to run pipes or cables.