Planning to remove structural supports is not a good time to take anonymous free advice. You'll want a structual engineer to design the reinforcement, and you'll probably need an architect or engineer's seal on your plans to get a building permit.

your point is well taken and I truly am depending on getting engineers advice. I am at this point looking to get ideas as to what others have seen or done. I am sure many have gone through this and now having done it would probably add advice as to what not to do even though told. We always say "I wish I had known". thank-you for your time

You will have to compute the load and then add additional beams to carry the load the 15 1/2'. This is a long span and you will lose some headroom with a deeper beam to obtain this. I doubt you will want to do that. And yes, have an engineer look at your situation. The footing under the existing beams may also have to be increased to carry the larger load. Much more than just remove a beam, add a few joists. You don't want the upstairs floor to become a trampoline.

I can't follow your framing description. It sounds like you have a single 48ft long steel beam running down the center of the house with 12ft spans on either side.

Other than the seats in the foundation at the ends of the beam, what are the interim supports?

"four floor joists approximately 8 ft apart". I don't understand this. You floor joists (likely 2x8's or 2x10's) and should run from the main center beam to the front and rear of the house and be spaced ~1 to 2 ft apart. Do you mean there are four columns holding the steel beam up? Is this what you need to remove?

FWIW: removing a lally column is the typical renovation to accomodate a pool table in the lower level of a ranch style house.

You need to have someone check it out, but if you have a steel beam in place, you may well be able to remove a column without any other modifications. Steel carries loads without deflecting much better than wood.

Hope this helps

Good luck

my knowledge of terms is quite evident from my first explaination. sdello has helped by noting the "lally column" is in fact the item I am looking to remove. This is the steel pole from the floor up to the steel beam that I am looking to remove. The other note is that the steel beam does run from left to right along the entire 48' span and is exactly in the middle of the floor/ceiling 12'. In addition to that I do have floor joists running from the front and back of the home meeting in the middle at the beam they are 2x8 and 12' apart.

Now that we're on the same page, you need to have a local structural engineer look at your house. Depending on how the steel was originally sized, it may well have the capacity to span 16 ft without the interim lally column. This may be easier than you thought.

Good luck