Hi All,
Just wondered if anyone had any experience of fitting a lintel above an existing door and could offer any advice.
I have quite a few bits of minor structural work on my new house (well, coming up to 2 years since we moved in, but time to get a move on and sort
some stuff out!). Most of the issues are around my adjoined garage and the fact that the builder didn't install pad stones under the roof
purlins or a lintel above the door between house/garage. To add to this, the garage internal walls are thermlite blocks, so as you can probably
imagine, the load of the roof combined with no lintel above the door and nature of thermalite blocks means I have a few cracks to make good.
I have a structural engineers report advising use of helical bars to be installed into the mortar of the blockwork and a lintel to be installed above
the door.
As it's a cavity wall, the choices are to install a concrete lintel into either leaf of the wall or put a catnic lintel in place. Just to add to
complications, there's another inner wall running off the house side of the door frame.
Has anyone got any experience/advise for this kind of thing?
Cheers
Steve
Couple of photo's for context:
that is just shocking wtf were they thinking and how did that get signed off?
think I be going for a 215 deep pre stressed concrete lintel given the roof beam above it, as that will not just increase the load but prevent the
bricks above forming an arch to spread the load as normal. Need to get a brace up against that roof beam asap. Certainly a lot of movement gone on in
that wall and extends quite far away from just the vertical load area, the crack over the cans of GT85 seems odd to be just related to the missing
lintel. Have you got other subsidence issues with this garage?
[Edited on 6/7/18 by Mr Whippy]
quote:
that is just shocking wtf were they thinking and how did that get signed off?
I'm not a builder, but it doesn't look good to me!
Were the garage and door added after the house was built?
Evern so the work should conform to standards and have a lintel over the door.
is that a plastic water pipe coming out right under the purlin as well?
There must be a lintel or something over the internal wall in the picture!
The house was built in 1985, so should certainly conform to reasonably modern requirements! How it got signed off I don't know, but it was built
for the previous owners and we're the first buyers, so basically the first ones to be finding all of the corners that got cut. I do know that
the builder went bust towards the end of the build, which goes some way to explaining the corners that have been cut...
The garage was built at the same time as the rest of the house - I have all of the original drawings etc. to confirm what should have been
built.
I've had a full structural report which confirms there's no movement relating to subsidence and nothing is critical/terminal to the
building. The cracking in the blockwork from the purlins is due to the fact there are no pad stones in places, so there's a lot of stress being
applied direct to the thermalite blocks - that's one of the other pieces of remedial work required (4 purlins, needing 8 pad stones installed).
Plan for this is to simply acro prop the purlins, cut out the blockwork and install some concrete padstones in place.
It's a pariticular problem over the door as the high load from the roof quickly finds its way to the first point of weakness, in this case being
the absence of a lintel because some daft bugger was cutting a corner.
The water pipe is the overflow from the bathroom cistern, so should be no real issue to move - I've always been slightly stunned at what the hell
they were thinking when they put it where it is.
The house is a fantastic property, and will be beautiful when finished, but needs a fair bit of work to bring a lot up to standard build wise (nothing
too expensive - the deeper end of DIY at worst) and a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge amount of cosmetic updating. It's been built to look like an older
farm house, so thats the style I'm trying to get it too - but as I'm forever telling my wife when she wants to dive straight in with the
paint brushes, we need to give the box has a sturdy base before we tie a ribbon onto it!
The other big thing is replacing the upstairs floor boards (T&G chip board) since they weren't moisture resistant green boards, so therefore
the bathroom floor is like something from an Indiana Jones set, with added complication that a boiler leak at some point in the past has resulted in
the same issue o the landing as well (it's gone through before with only the carpet stopping you fall through - anyone seen The Money Pit?)
But, it has all the potential of being a real dream home - it'll be nice when it's done as my old Nan would say... 
[Edited on 6/7/18 by StevieB]
quote:
Originally posted by melly-g
is that a plastic water pipe coming out right under the purlin as well?
There must be a lintel or something over the internal wall in the picture!