I want to remove a roughly 18' beam that goes across my garage. Oddly, it's the only one at this level. The ceiling beams are all about 28 inches higher. When I touch this beam it wobbles quite a bit, though it's firmly attached at the ends, leading me to believe there isn't much if any load on it. It seems like the beams above it are doing the same job. What the heck is it doing there, and how can I figure out if it's safe to remove? I'm hoping it's just there as a byproduct of the building process or something.
One potentially interesting note: I measured where the beam would come into my house (to the right of the garage as pictured) and it looks like it would come i directly above my front door. Interesting?
Edit: the "suspicious rope" was installed by myself just prior to taking these pictures; I was about to cut the beam and didn't want it to fall. Then I thought I'd better take a moment to reconsider, and here we are :)
There was previously a garage door opener which I removed; it ran just under this beam and wasn't attached to it. There WAS an electrical ground stapled to it (can be seen in the pictures) which I moved up to the beam above. I can't imagine someone would install a 2x6 just to run a ground when the beam above serves just as well.
