The interaction of vertical and horizontal loads is the decisive combination of actions for multi-storey buildings with masonry shear walls in most cases. This article presents a simple and clear method, which can be used with modern open floor plans to verify a favourable load transfer of the vertical actions for masonry walls. The method is extended in the second part of the article to be published in one of the coming issues of the journal Mauerwerk for horizontal actions and explained with an example.