Installing Awning in to lintel - safe?

[Scoboblio]

Good evening everyone I've just bought a 2.5m wide retractable patio awning which I was planning to install today to the outside of our single brick extension. Having removed the old (quite light, fan type) awning, I marked out where the brackets for the new one would go, only to realise that the fixings would be going right in to the lintel above the patio doors

Judging by the fact that my battery powered hammer drill won't go any further through the outside of the wall than the render, I'm guessing that it's a concrete lintel. Then again, we have an air vent just above the patio doors which surely would be quite strange if the builder had to cut a big whole through a concrete lintel to install it!

As you can see from the picture space is very limited as the roof of the extension is only slightly above the door frame, so going higher to miss the lintel is impossible - can anyone please advise me whether it'd be ok to break out the SDS plus drill and install the expanding fixings for the awning directly in to the lintel? Don't worry I take full responsibility if I do it and it cracks......... but is it likely to take the weight of a heavy 2.5m x 3m awning?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Untitled

• Scoboblio
• 6 Jun 2015
• 1

 

[oldbutnotdead]

I'd be very wary of that approach chap. Drilling through prestressed lintels is never a good idea plus the lintel probably hasn't been designed or installed to resist the torque that the open awning will place on it and it doesn't look as if there's enough mass above the lintel to resist that torque. (The weight of the awning will tend to rotate the lintel or top row of blocks around its leading edge. If there was 10 tons of brickwork above then that would hold the trailing edge down which would resist the rotation. A few joists and a flat roof aren't going to cut it. If the wallplate has been properly strapped to the walls then that would help)

Vertical spreader plates up the wall will help but that 3m awning is going to put a lot of load on that wall, not sure if I'd be comfortable with the whole concept.

 

[tony1851]

+1 to the above.

It's also not just the weight of the awning itself, but possible wind load on it as well, which may put repeated reversals of load on the structure.

 

[^woody^]

I can't see a lintel. It looks like a frame. There won't be a lintel with an a air brick cut in the middle of it

 

[Scoboblio]

Thanks guys.

I can't see a lintel. It looks like a frame. There won't be a lintel with an a air brick cut in the middle of it

That's what I thought, presumably even if there's not a lintel the lack of brickwork above it would make strapping an awning to it a no no?

 

[^woody^]

You would have to fit a timber across the face of the wall and frame.

Potentially drop some straps down from whatever is behind the fascia.

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

Masonary drills won't drill through a catnic lintel. I reckon its a catnic with a piece of wood where the soldier course of bricks should go. This would give a void to link into the roof void for ventilation.
As there is very little weight holding this level of bricks/lintels down, fixing would tend to flex the whole front edge and centre of the roof unless strapped down to a much lower level.
FWIW We stayed in a hotel in Coblenz right next to the river Rheine. It had a roof terrace which went right out to the tow path. Well sometime when we went out it had an awning and sometimes not. So usual thing "hunt the switch". After a couple of days we realised that we had an anemometer on the wall out side and if the wind speed was too high the thing retracted.
vorsprung durch technic
Frank

 

[^woody^]

A steel lintel of that span would be 225mm deep. If that airbrick is in the same place inside, then it may not be a lintel.