Opening up a wall between the living and dining area is one of the most requested changes in Malaysian terrace houses. The problem is that load bearing walls in Malaysia are not always obvious. Removing load bearing walls in Malaysia without an engineer is how people get hurt. Most of the time it is straightforward. Occasionally it is the wall holding up the floor above.
Load bearing walls in Malaysia: how Malaysian houses are built
Most terrace and semi-detached houses built in recent decades use a reinforced concrete frame — columns and beams carry the load, and the brick walls between them are infill. In that construction, many internal walls can be removed. Older houses, and some low-rise construction, use load-bearing masonry where the wall itself carries the floor or roof above.
You cannot reliably tell which you have by tapping the wall. You establish it from the structural drawings, and where those are unavailable, from an engineer's inspection.
Never remove or cut without an engineer
- Any reinforced concrete column or beam, including chasing deeply into one for pipes or conduit
- Any wall in a high-rise unit, where walls may be shear walls forming part of the lateral stability system
- Any part of a staircase structure
- The wall below an upper-floor wall in a house without a visible frame
What a proper opening involves
Where a wall genuinely carries load, removing it means designing and installing a beam to carry that load to the columns or walls either side, with temporary propping while the work is done. That is an engineer's design, not a contractor's judgement.
The strata complication
In a stratified building, structural elements typically form part of the common property, and the house rules and the Strata Management Act framework restrict what an owner may alter within their parcel. Even an apparently non-structural partition may require management approval.
The practical rule
If a wall is being removed and nobody has produced either a structural drawing or an engineer's endorsement, the job should not proceed. The cost of an engineer's opinion is trivial next to the cost of propping up a sagging floor afterwards — or worse.
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