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Window Lintel Repair
What Is a Window Lintel?
A window lintel is a load bearing beam that spans above window and door openings in masonry structures. It can be made of any material that has high bending strength, though it is usually made from wood, concrete or stone.
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Common Window Lintel Failures
In some instances, particularly in brick houses built from 1930s to 1990s,
it was deemed acceptable building practice to use the heavy timber or metal window frames to carry the load of brickwork above window and door openings (thus acting in place of a lintel), whilst using a traditional lintel to support the inner leaf masonry and the floors.
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A visibly sagging window lintel due to lack of lintel
​Window Lintels rarely fail. It is more often the case that a structural piece of the building like a window frame has been removed or replaced by something with no load bearing capacity.
Occasionally brick arch lintels fail due to ground movement or building movement due to poor design- all of these problems are usually easy to rectify.
"As a general rule it is always best to carry out remedial repair sooner rather than later, as the longer the problem goes unresolved the greater the visual impact of the failure becomes and the closer the lintel comes to collapsing or being beyond the point of repair." advises Jonathan Thomas, founder of JTC Structural Repair who has 40 years of experience in this kind of work.
The problem with UPVC windows
The quick advent of replacement UPVC windows created issues that were not foreseen during the original construction of the property. Put simply: there is no such thing as a load bearing UPVC window frame. This misconception has led to the widespread problem of brickwork failure above window and door openings where structural timber and steel windows have been replaced with UPVC.
Identifying window lintel issues
Visual inspection of the underside of the brickwork immediately above the window or door head will usually reveal steel supporting the brickwork above the opening- in this case, a lintel is clearly present. However, if this is not present, cracks spanning from either side of the window opening rising towards the middle of a window opening are a dead give away of the lack of an adequate window lintel.
If your house is on an estate of houses all built at a similar time, similar damage or evidence of repair will be visible on them.
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Bay Window Lintel Failures
This problem can also go hand in hand with bay window lintels, whereby there were previously wooden or metal windows supporting the load of brickwork above that have since been replaced by non load bearing UPVC windows. Learn more about bay window repairs here
Examples of our repairs
We use an engineered & proven method using helical wire to reinforce the brickwork above a window lintel without the need for the expensive and disruptive brickwork removal and rebuilding required to fit an angle steel or concrete lintel.
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This method is subtle and non destructive, leaving limited visible trace of our completed works. The only visible signs of our works once completed are usually the freshly pointed mortar which will dry to match the surrounding mortar colour over time.
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We use diamond bladed dust extraction wall chasers to minimise the dust generated during this process- reducing the inconvenience to our clients and their neighbours.
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Bed joints raked out, ready for installation of Strucsol Window Lintel system
Window lintel fully retrofitted- only fresh mortar is visible which will dry to match existing mortar colour.
Is this something we can do for you? Submit an enquiry, or get in touch on one of the following:
Tel: 01162375082
Mobile: 07908783783936