Hi,
We have a newbuild (2010) house, with a detached garage (in a block of garages). We have a door into our garage as it backs onto our garden.
I'm planing on converting the half the garage to use as an office, the plan is to install insulated plasterboard, nothing posh, just somewhere to sit and do my work.
I've replaced the rear garage door with a glass upvc one and I've started to install a new window on the same wall. The garage is brick single skin with piers (which I'm hoping are tied to the single skin), the wall with the door (and new window) takes the wall plate. That wall consists of a pier, the door opening (with steel lintel above), another pier, 950mm of single skin, then another pier (then into next doors). The window is going into that single skin area.
I installed the window last weekend, the plan was to simply remove a row of bricks (929 wide for the concrete lintel), then cut vertically down for the 600 wide window, and knock the brickwork out (carefully I may add). There is only 2 courses of bricks above the lintel.
But I've ran into some issues, firstly I couldn't get full depth with the cutter, so had to knock out the bricks, which worked ok but the ones in the top corner shattered (hollow bricks). Frustratingly these are the ones which sit below the lintel. a stack of 3 half bricks will look awful, so I'm guessing I need to take some of the bricks out?
I rather foolishly didn't put a level on the wall before I began, but did last week and it seems there is a bow in the wall (between the door and the window - although it's apparent further along across neighbours garages too). I'm not sure if that was there before or not, the joint work internally looks ok, and it doesn't look like the wall plate has moved. But the wall is out of plumb by about half an inch (outwards) up to 5 ft high, then slopes back inwards - it may well have been built like that, my concern is that I've somehow disturbed it, although that seems unlikely as everything else is fine, and it extends across the other garages too (although is less pronounced).. That all said, I've noticed externally that one of the bricks in the pillar the joint is cracked all the way around it, but that may have been like that, or knocked loose from the vibration when I removed the adjoining brick.
The whole thing was giving me sleepless nights, so being overly cautious, I figured rather than studding between the piers (to give me a flat surface to install the insulated PB) I'd add some strength and do it in block work (tied to the single skin with L brackets), it will also act to stop some moisture ingress (through the single skin - it's the only external wall).. Which I've done, but as I got near the top I've noticed the internal middle pier is loose about 4 courses from the top (I can actually lift it off!), so I'm still concerned about it... I'm wondering if this middle pier is purely for asthetics and there to take the door jams (it's built up separately but I'd assumed it was tied back to the wall), does anyone know if that's likely to be the case, or perhaps they only tied it up to four course down??
Any advice anyone could offer would be great... I suspect I'm worrying unnecessarily, but
In hindsight, I wish I'd simply raked out the joint, and inserted a leaf lintel from behind, then removed bricks underneath one by one at the joints.
We have a newbuild (2010) house, with a detached garage (in a block of garages). We have a door into our garage as it backs onto our garden.
I'm planing on converting the half the garage to use as an office, the plan is to install insulated plasterboard, nothing posh, just somewhere to sit and do my work.
I've replaced the rear garage door with a glass upvc one and I've started to install a new window on the same wall. The garage is brick single skin with piers (which I'm hoping are tied to the single skin), the wall with the door (and new window) takes the wall plate. That wall consists of a pier, the door opening (with steel lintel above), another pier, 950mm of single skin, then another pier (then into next doors). The window is going into that single skin area.
I installed the window last weekend, the plan was to simply remove a row of bricks (929 wide for the concrete lintel), then cut vertically down for the 600 wide window, and knock the brickwork out (carefully I may add). There is only 2 courses of bricks above the lintel.
But I've ran into some issues, firstly I couldn't get full depth with the cutter, so had to knock out the bricks, which worked ok but the ones in the top corner shattered (hollow bricks). Frustratingly these are the ones which sit below the lintel. a stack of 3 half bricks will look awful, so I'm guessing I need to take some of the bricks out?
I rather foolishly didn't put a level on the wall before I began, but did last week and it seems there is a bow in the wall (between the door and the window - although it's apparent further along across neighbours garages too). I'm not sure if that was there before or not, the joint work internally looks ok, and it doesn't look like the wall plate has moved. But the wall is out of plumb by about half an inch (outwards) up to 5 ft high, then slopes back inwards - it may well have been built like that, my concern is that I've somehow disturbed it, although that seems unlikely as everything else is fine, and it extends across the other garages too (although is less pronounced).. That all said, I've noticed externally that one of the bricks in the pillar the joint is cracked all the way around it, but that may have been like that, or knocked loose from the vibration when I removed the adjoining brick.
The whole thing was giving me sleepless nights, so being overly cautious, I figured rather than studding between the piers (to give me a flat surface to install the insulated PB) I'd add some strength and do it in block work (tied to the single skin with L brackets), it will also act to stop some moisture ingress (through the single skin - it's the only external wall).. Which I've done, but as I got near the top I've noticed the internal middle pier is loose about 4 courses from the top (I can actually lift it off!), so I'm still concerned about it... I'm wondering if this middle pier is purely for asthetics and there to take the door jams (it's built up separately but I'd assumed it was tied back to the wall), does anyone know if that's likely to be the case, or perhaps they only tied it up to four course down??
Any advice anyone could offer would be great... I suspect I'm worrying unnecessarily, but
In hindsight, I wish I'd simply raked out the joint, and inserted a leaf lintel from behind, then removed bricks underneath one by one at the joints.
