The beam is between the living room and kitchen.

Joseph, Being a homeowner myself, I of course am in the same boat as you with regards to wasteful spending of potentially unnecessary services for a home remodel. There are many situations you would not need an engineer to help you with a design. Adding a simple header for a window/doorway to a load bearing wall through a licensed contractor who knows what span tables to use for the region is an example. It really depends on the situation and the person's competency. I gave this situation some more thought, and it basically boils down to two options for a typical homeowner: 1. Are you willing to accept the life and death risk/consequences of a structural decision/calculation you make? You may not get sued or goto jail for a structural collapse that kills your loved one, but are ready to live with that decision? Do you have a complete understanding about your particular situation to make an informed structural design decision? Are you confident the age of the wood/beam in question is in good enough condition to use span tables for shear, moment, and deflection requirements? Beams can fail in multiple ways. Do you know how to inspect wood for this criteria? Do you know the knott to clear wood ratio required for a certain construction grade of wood listed in span tables? Do you know how to calculate when too many nails, screw, holes is too many? Do you know when it's safe to assume a species of wood, and when you need to be conservative? Do you know how to visually identify a beam that is likely load limited by moment, shear, or deflection? Do you know how to identify a beam that is typically subjected to a distributed load but must be designed for a point load in the same or different direction? Beams that are improperly sized typically do not just collapse immediately, they collapse later under a circumstance not accounted for. Licensed structural engineers spend their careers understanding the modes of failure and designing for them. When a building does not collapse under normal or extreme situations it is not an accident, everything is calculated to save lives. Licensed civil engineers are arguably responsible for more lives than any other professional field, it justifies the difficulty in getting the license. or 2. Are you willing to spend 3-400 dollars on an engineer like me who will spend a few hours to look at your home, make some quick calculations, and generate a basic drawing with their stamp? The stamp guarantees a sound design with serious legal consequences if that is not the case. Those consequences follow me long after I retire, and include fines or even imprisonment. No civil engineer wants to provide their stamp without adequate investigation because of how serious of a commitment it is, but we will do it when we are confident in the design. It's our job. My stamp has the power to override provisions in the building code, and forms the legal basis for a claim against a home 20+ years down the road, you could not say the same for other trades.

She said there is a second story. I am assuming the second story is above this, since this looks like the main living area, kitchen, living etc. I would assume, second story is the bedrooms and this wall was the support for the upper floor. In any case, neither floor needs to collapse down on a lower one. Since she has had an engineer and the beam is not sufficient, hopefully, now it will be repaired, whether it is the first floor or the second floor. The sad part is that everyone now thinks they need this open floor plan, and a lot of load bearing walls have been removed and not supported properly. Some will not even realise it until the ceiling starts sagging, or collapsing. Sabrina is lucky, she spotted the sag in that beam right away, and she did get an engineer in to check it out, before things got worse. Its unfortunate that there are so many contractors out there that do this type of work, that really, just dont care about the safety of those that live in the house.

Live_wire_oak, I certainly wouldn’t dispute that most contractors would not use double 2x4’s for a header despite what the code allows (and therefore what is safe). I suspect that you and I know there are many things a contractor does when framing a house that has more to do with just meeting code. It’s much easier to tell your employees to frame every door and window with 2x12s to be safe and not have to do code checks for every opening. I will say though, the better framers in the small minority will take the time to understand what the actual header requirement is so as not to overbuild and create unnecessary thermal bridging.