Okay, engineering question: how to safely cut down a large beam?
We have a beam in the back room that spans 5.5 meters (about 18 feet) that needs to be cut down. It's about 2/3 of the way up from the floor and no longer serves a purpose; it used to hold up a false ceiling.
It's about 10" wide and 6" thick and I imagine it's very heavy.
My idea (see the photo) is to support it from underneath with 2x4s, attached to the beam with heavy-duty angle brackets. In addition, we would support the beam from above with eye bolts screwed into the load-bearing beam on the ceiling, one bolt on each end. We would tie 8mm climbing ropes around the beam on each end and thread the ropes up through the eye bolts. One (or more) people would hold onto each rope.
Once we've cut through all the way through each end, as close to the wall as we can, we would gently lower the beam using the two ropes. We'd either detach the 2x4s or just tip them slightly to the side as we lower the beam. I'm not sure which would work better.
(The 2nd photo is a still shot from a video. You can see the beam that needs to be cut and the main ceiling beam above it. Right now there's a vertical piece of wood connecting the two beams, which we would remove before cutting the lower beam.)
So...would this work? Are we going to kill ourselves? Anyone have a better idea?
So today was a typical Wednesday: shuttling kids to/from soccer all afternoon plus a quick shopping trip to Aldi on the way home. Late in the afternoon, Ivy and I went on a treasure hunt, wandering around Vieux Nice looking for cool things. She found €2.60, a button, a rhinestone, and a metal bracket. She also stepped in dog poop. Eew.
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