You can but would most likely need to ass steel or a large LVL beam at the very least. Anything is possible if you throw enough money at it.

Well...you have a couple of choices: 1) consult with a structural engineer, and; 2) remove the column and see if anything happens.

Good luck!

Your house won't fall down if you remove the column. I'm not recommending it, I'm just saying your house won't fall down. Modern houses are way over-engineered.

@Joseph Corlett, LLC, "Your house won't fall down".

That sets the bar quite low, no? That's not typical Joseph level top tier advice IMO.

I removed/replaced many of them. The complicated part is to replace the beam which will support the load of the new span that you create. But when you have the beam design and you can get the beam down into the basement and as long as you provide temporary supports while removing what needs to be removed the rest is cutting out the old and inserting the new beam, etc, and follow the new structural design details.

Its time for a reality check.

Assuming this is a center girder supporting the floor of a 30 ft wide one story house with posts at 10 ft o.c., if the girder were made of the strongest grade of Laminated Veneer Lumber, two 9 1/4 LVL's would be slightly oversized but the next smaller size would not be adequate.

If the girder is continuous over the post in question, removing the post would likely double the span to 20 ft. For the existing girder to have originally been sized for a 20 ft. span it would have been two 18" LVL's, three 16" LVL's or four 14" LVL's.

These large sizes are because when a beam span increases by a factor of 2, the bending force increases by a factor of 4 but the deflection increases by a factor of 16.

So, longer beams are normally designed for defection and the increase in size vs span accelerates.

Even if you believe the code/accepted engineering practice deflection limit of L/360 is excessive, a limit of L/180 (which doubles the allowed deflection), would require two 14" LVL's or four 11 1/4 LVL's for this example.

I am curious to know the type, size and span of this beam to see if it is so oversized that a post can be safely removed and still meet the building code (if there is one). That might set some kind of record for idiocy in house construction but as idiotic as claiming such over engineering is typical of modern houses. The issue is not so much about collapse (when your house is jammed with people) as sagging, unlevel floors, floor bounce and cracking of ceilings.

Perhaps an engineer would approve steel flitch plates or steel channels or very tall LVL's on each side of the existing girder with thru-bolts or self-drilling LedgerLok screws and some clever way to provide bearing at the old posts or new steel tube posts. Lally columns are concrete filled thin walled steel tubes and I doubt the engineer will want to use them for this situation. He will also want to know the size of the post footing.

I'm not recommending any design solution since I know virtually nothing about the structure of your house; I'm only trying to help you understand the magnitude of what you are proposing.

You may wish to discuss if adding a column or two in a less disruptive location could allow you to remove the existing one without replacing the beam. Either way, it will take some engineering to determine the support requirements. Trying to open the span completely may be more trouble and money than it is worth. Don't get set on this approach because the objective should not be to remove the column but rather to design a good finished basement space.

My basement has two columns so our layout put the bathroom door next to one column and a closet hiding the other one. The previous owner's layout had two closets in that area and the column was in the open area. A small layout change made a very large difference in the feel of the space.

"That's not typical Joseph level top tier advice IMO."

Maybe, but it's at least consistent with every other thread where Joe had an opportunity to minimize the professional contributions of engineers in residential construction.

I don't agree that modern homes are "way over engineered" if the implication is that the performance of construction materials used in modern homes exceed the design requirements by a wide margin. I'd argue the opposite is true.

Consider that the majority (roughly 80% according to 2017 U.S. Census data) of new homes constructed in the U.S. are built by large-scale production builders. The business model of production builders is to achieve economies of scale by replicating designs as often as a given market will allow and building them or derivative designs in as many markets as possible. Each design is thoroughly value engineered to minimize the amount and cost of construction materials--eliminating double top plates, eliminating headers, pushing I-joists and panels to their limits for both spacing and span, eliminating blocking, using drywall clips, etc. Modern homes aren't way over engineered, they're engineered so they come as close to meeting the minimum code requirements as possible and still pass inspection.

Anyone considering structural changes to a home will be well served by consulting credentialed design professionals and leaving the structural cowboys out on the range.

The only modern structural elements I’ve found to be over structured are interior door headers. The old builders used a pair of diagonal 2X’s to spread the load. If you know nothing about structural design I suppose modern long span beams might look oversized. Buy a Timber Construction Manual or a manufacturer’s LVL and PSL design manual.

I worked with a guy who's neighbor removed a structural column on his own. He said it was the best funeral he ever went to.

Mark, it's amazing what some people do without thinking, and most of end up with tragic outcomes.

Like a guy cutting a tree branch, he was standing on with a chainsaw and having a safety harness tied to the same branch... the outcome spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

A while back a friend of mines neighbor was moving a small shed they had the shed on the back of the truck with another guy standing on the gate holding. The minute the truck hit the bottom of a driveway apron the shed slid crushing the guy to death.

Heard some stories when a few porches comedown when they tried to replace columns without supporting the roof, thinking it will hold up, some got lucky, some not so much.

No wonder there is an old saying that here is a moron born every second.

Your least expensive option to consider is to replace the single column in the middle of the living space with two columns placed one to each side. You'll need the engineering calculations.

Increasing the span by 50% rather than 100% will probably allow the existing beam to be reinforced and will require two new posts and footings.

Depending on the layout of the house/stairs, it might be near impossible (or $$$$) to even get a beam long enough down into the basement.

Or it could be easy. The OP has not told us enough to know.

Depending on the beam. but most of the time you can get into the basement, a few times we removed the foundation block to do that. If there is a will there is always a way and as long as the customer's budget allows pretty much anything can be done.

Drive by posting.

This appears to be a post related to aspiringdiyer's post of last Sunday "Insulation in Basement." FWIW, the photo in that post shows a steel I-beam supporting dimensional lumber joists.

Going on what Charles noted, if it is the black lally column in the photo which appears to be about 4ft from the concrete wall, I wonder why the column is there if the I-beam is supported at the wall end?