Homemade lintel? - Is it possible?

[dig dug dan]

interesting one.

Picked up some rubble from a mate of mine (builder did the work, and left it all piled up on the drive mixed with carpet, cans and allsorts),
anyway, there were two concrete lintels in the heap.
Most of the rubble was breeze and thermalite, so i tipped that at a local farm as they wanted it for a farm track
But the lintels i kept and crushed them.
the smaller of the two had the usual single strand of twisted rebar through the middle, but the larger, which was about 8' by 5" x 5", had two pieces of rusty angle iron together in the middle.
they looked like old chainlink posts.
this beam was supporting the rear wall over a patio door.
Is it actually structural, and more to the point can you get away with this sort of thing if the building inspector calls?
I thought the way they made by tensioning the inner wire, pouring the concrete into the mould, letting it set, then removing the tension??

[lutonlagerlout]

in the old days dan,
I.E. pre 70's a lot of houses had a concret lintel poured in situ on the inside skin of a cavity wall and the outside skin of bricks just rested on to the loadbearing windowframe
we often find all sorts of metal in these in situ lintels

anyway this system works great until bodgit and scarper window fitters come along and cut out the load bearing window,and replace it with a <cough-cough> plastic frame

sometimes they are lucky and get the window in before the brickwork collapses
that way it just takes a few years to sag

i shouldn't moan as its a rich source of additional income for me putting lintels into walls after replacement windows have been fitted

LLL

[irishpaving]

Helped the brother in law put in new patio doors and found a lintel sitting on the inside which was thick enough for a liftshaft. Outside skin only had a light flat piece of iron. Took 3 of us to remove it and we still struggled

[Jonah]

in the old days dan,
I.E. pre 70's a lot of houses had a concret lintel poured in situ on the inside skin of a cavity wall and the outside skin of bricks just rested on to the loadbearing windowframe
we often find all sorts of metal in these in situ lintels

anyway this system works great until bodgit and scarper window fitters come along and cut out the load bearing window,and replace it with a <cough-cough> plastic frame

sometimes they are lucky and get the window in before the brickwork collapses
that way it just takes a few years to sag

i shouldn't moan as its a rich source of additional income for me putting lintels into walls after replacement windows have been fitted

LLL

My folks live in an early 60's bungalow with three bedroom windows at the back. Since having new windows put in (over ten yrs ago), the row of bricks immediately above the uPVC frames have sagged. I wouldn't say there's any real danger of anything untoward happening, but is it possible to retro fit some sort of lintel?, and if so, how?

[lutonlagerlout]

the brickwork has to be cut out to at least 150mm each side of the window reveal
then an L10 lintel bedded on and the brickwork rebuilt
its a pain in the backside job but window firms seem never to mention lintels unless the wall collapses===> which i have seen a couple of times
LLL

[Jonah]

Thanks for your advice.