Catnic style lintel opening size 1500mm. You cannot have point loads on them, but I will effectively have a single celcon block (440 wide), then an engineering brick padstone, then the load (end of a purlin), so would this spread the load enough? Else I could put a concrete lintel instead of the eng brick to spread the load a bit more, say over 2 blocks. Of course this is thermal bridging so a balance must be struck ! Cheers, Simon.
So I would imagine a purlin over a whole 440mm block is generally OK.
Simon.
Yes, except that aircrete blocks could crush under the load, better to use a pre-stressed concrete padstone
Do you mean a padstone between the aircrete block and the purlin, or a whole concrete block instead of the aircrete. I don't think the BCO would like losing a whole aircrete block for insulation reasons. I believe a common padstone in this situation is simply an engineering brick, which is what I mentioned earlier. I've no objection to putting in a prestressed concrete lintel over the whole opening if it was required, but I suspect this would be over-engineering ! Certainly aircrete is used for loadbearing purposes, and I've at least seen floor joist hangers directly on aircrete. Cheers, Simon.
A pre-stresed lintel is 75H X 100W by whatever length you want to make it - it's not going to make one iota of difference WRT insulation.
a brick is only 200mm long.
PS lintels come in many lengths, I was thinking say about 5 - 600mm, then it covers more than one aircrete block in length.
Floor joists are many and each one takes a small amount of weight, a
*single* purlin takes the weight of all the joists, which are holding up the battens and tiles and everything else.
Thanks, I understand what you're saying now. Sounds like a good idea. Simon.
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