My living room ceilings were a mess, so I ordered new 2.4m x 1.2m panels and tore it the old stuff down a few hours ahead of delivery. What fun!
Not fun was finding that the steel beam in the ceiling/floor space has no fire proofing. I'm in the UK and there's regulations about this - steel beams must survive 30 mins of fire. Your insurance is invalidated without that. Who knows when this misdeed was committed, but I have to remedy it.
Pics:
There is loads of advice online about new builds and new home-improvement work that put in new beams. Nothing that I can find from UK-GOV about old/existing houses. If there had been something there before, even it was shitty by today's standard, I would have been able to leave it in.
The beam is not exposed. If it was I could have used intumescent paint. I think I could do if it wasn't exposed, but it would still need 5cm expansion space before the regular plasterboard (drywall or sheetrock depending on your local language) layer, but it only a 15mm gap
Here's a guy who knows what he's doing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGhHn6ULAJM (fast forward to 7m 30s) - putting on double-thickness of regular plasterboard. Is that to regulation? People ask him questions in the youtube comments but he does not answer them. I could do this, but it is very intricate.
There's also "Glasroc F MULTIBOARD" that's for fire proofing - this can be single layer, I think. Videos of people cutting that make it look consumer safe. Three sides of this, then the regular plasterboard below that. Or Just the bottom in Glasroc - a whole 1.2m wide - instead of the regular plasterboard for that section of the ceiling?
More videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOhtCJzmMPM - a man using "GirdaGrips" (exposed beam)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X9abfmZd-g - a lady strapping a plank to the underside of the beam. Her's is an exposed beam, but I could do the same for the underside of mine given the room between it and the level of the ceiling plasterboard
After I'm done do I need an official inspection? Do I record my own video of my work for any purpose including if we were to sell the house?