Gas fire installed - should there be a lintel???

[Gavinda Jaya Jaya]

Hi

I've just had an slimline blanced flue inset gas fire installed (Stdio 2 from

)

It required a new hole around 90cm * 45cm to be fitted into (no chimney involved) - the work was surveyed by the fire company and performed by a Gas Safe registered installer and the fire works just fine.

A small vertical hairline crack has appeared in the existing wall which runs all the way to the ceiling - I'm pretty sure no lintel was installed but I wasn't around when it was installed.

Should it have been? The interior wall is standard breeze block so there would only be a couple of entire blocks hovering above the space.

The fire won't be load bearing but the above wall goes all the way the the apex of the house, so a good 6-7m?

So - should a lintel have been inserted as part of the job?

Gavin

[Roger Mills]

Yes.

[John Rumm]

Assuming the 90cm is the width, then that is wider than a standard door, and that would usually have a lintel.

Seems pretty likely.

(45cm on a block wall would be less of an issue)

[Roger Hayter]

It's perhaps worth pointing out that minor cracking is quite likely even if it does have a satisfactory lintel. Provided it does not get any bigger it is probably fine to just fill it. As far as a lintel is concerned, the OP could ask the people who did it, test with a magnet (although the lintel might not be steel) or if all else fails cut a strip out of the plaster to check.

[Brian Reay]

As Roger says, even if they have fitted a lintel- which I would expect- small cracks are not uncommon after such work. If nothing else, the heat from the new fire may have contributed to it.

I'm not so sure re a magnet- even a decent cover of render and plaster will probably be enough to mean the distance between the surface of the wall and the lintel is too big for a magnet to work.

I'd try a stud finder. While these are designed to detect wood behind plasterboard, they do detect other things. I've used mine to detect wood behind a metal skinned, 50mm insulated, motorhome body.

Try first somewhere you known there is/should be a lintel.

[Brian Gaff]

Blimey, I think it most certainly should, however even if they are, sometimes setting out due to the different loading can still give rise to cracks at some time in the future.

Brian

[Harry Bloomfield]

Gavinda Jaya Jaya formulated the question :

Most certainly, there should have been a lintel installed.