Lintel needed for 46cm wide shower box?

[flutterbye]

Hi

We're having a new bathroom installed including a recessed soap/shampoo box which has been cut into the first skin of an existing inner block wall. It is 46cm wide.

The bathroom fitters have said it doesn't need a lintel but I would definitely be grateful for a second opinion not least because they have been wrong about other things and to my eyes it looks like it is bowing a bit already.

So should I insist a lintel is fitted and is it a difficult job for them to do so? Many thanks in advance.

This bathroom is on the top floor below the loft.

Soap box wall

• flutterbye
• 15 Nov 2012
• 1

Soap Box

• flutterbye
• 15 Nov 2012
• 1

 

[flutterbye]

Oh, perhaps I should have been clearer that this is in an external cavity wall with the box cutting into the first skin of the wall.

 

[OwainDIYer]

what size blocks is the wall built of?

 

[flutterbye]

The walls are now mostly covered in plaster but the blocks at the top of the box are exposed which tells me that they are at least 29cm long (but could be longer I don't know) and are about 11cm deep.

They are grey and I think original in a 1970s build house.

 

[OwainDIYer]

if it's 30 cm block and a 46 cm hole, at most the box has to hold up the weight of one block.