Loose bricks above external door opening

[Steven Campbell]

I recently had a new UPVC front door installed. The old door was wooden with a wooden frame.

I've now noticed that 4 soldier bricks above the new UPVC cladding have come loose and have dropped about 5mm. In fact if I push the UPVC cladding, I can just about push the bricks back in to position.

My question is, would the old wooden frame have been used as some kind of lintel to support these bricks or should there be some form of metal lintel in there that I can't obviously see because of the cladding?

Thanks

Steven.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A lot of houses just used the window frames as lintels. Crap, but it stays for a while.

I would be tempted to get a can of expanding foam, let it do its legendary stuff, repoint, and leave it.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|I recently had a new UPVC front door installed. The old door was wooden with |a wooden frame.

Get the installer to put it right. Insist that the work is done properly at no cost to you.

[nightjar]

It was not unusual in older properties for the door frame to be used as a support for the brick above; only a few actually rest on it. In a nearby town, there is a whole estate of former Council housing where just about every door and smaller window has an inverted V of re-pointed brickwork over the openings. Modern practice would be to put in a lintel, but I doubt that replacement door installers would have done that. However, the weight could distort the frame enough to cause the door to stick, so you probably do need to get it sorted.

Colin Bignell

[meow2222]

You can either put in a lintel or remortar the dropped bricks. With new mortar they should last a long time before cracking again.

NT

[Lobster]

What if it's a solid wall though - we don't know (or do the soldier bricks define a cavity wall??). IANAstructuralengineer but couldn't there be god-knows-what above it in terms of loading (eg 1st floor joists) in which case presumably there would be a risk of more dropping down than the classic triangle of bricks immediately above the door?

David

[meow2222]

Solid wall or cavity wont make any difference afaik. Quite right about the joists, if there are some resting there. Generally they get held up by the floorboards in such situations (not kidding) but thats certainly not a situation I'd want to introduce deliberately :)

NT

[Mark]

I would guess that you would need a lintel. If they cracked quickly before I would think that it would happen again if you just remortared them. IANAB.

Mark.

[meow2222]

Some time back I saw a house built using no lintels anywhere. No soldier courses either, nothing. Even the brick built double wide garage had nothing to support the brickwork over the double width front opening. About 15 or so years later the brickwork joints in the double garage started to crack up, and he accepted defeat and put support in. There was never a problem anywhere in the house itself.

I expect the reason the OP had problems was due to 2 things together:

1. very old mortar, probably in rough condition with little strength
2. removal of any other support.

IOW if remortared, and its a normal width door, I would expect it to last fairly well. Of course a lintel would be a better option, since it guarantees no problem in future, but its not the only option.

NT

[Lobster]

and

1. absence of a building control officer? :-)

David

[meow2222]

yeah I'm still not sure how he got away with it. The absence of support on the garage couldnt have been more obvious.

NT

[Steven Campbell]

I've uploaded a picture of it as there is nowhere to remortar unless I rake out the old mortar. Is that what you mean?

red line and arrow is where it is coming away, not that it needs highlighting. The bricks don't appear to be supporting anything above them so I reckon they are falling due to their own weight. I'm really loathed to removed the upvc cladding as I am terrible with silicone and will never get it back to the way it was.

The door was only fitted in February but I think they would just laugh if I said they were responsible. But it was their surveyor / measurer that checked it out before we went ahead with it. If there was any doubt they should have mentioned it then.

Steven.

[meow2222]

I see you have a soldier course, which is much more self supporting than horizontal bricks. Yes you need to remove old mortar to get new in, you cant just repoint. Beware of one thing with soldiers, if you clear out one joint the whole line of soldiers loses all its supporting ability, so you need to support the bricks before remortaring.

1. support the whole soldier line, not just the ones to be worked on
2. remove mortar at the cracks
3. jack bricks up into position
4. new mortar
5. Only remove support once mortar has cured, which takes longer than setting.

For once I think its fair to say this isnt the glazing co's fault.

NT