I'd like to fit a lintel over my front door. The brickwork above the door is totally shot to pieces (the inner skin), seems fine on the outer skin (there's no cavity). The outer skin has a proper steel lintel, but there's just a wooden lintel on the inner, which seems to be bolted to the outer skin with a couple of screws, and it has no supports at either end! I think someone took the wood door frame out, put two bolts through the wood lintel to secure it to the outer skin, and then fitted a UPCV door underneath it.
I decided to use a strongboy before I remove the wooden lintel, but there's a couple of details I'm not sure about.
1) How hard to tighten the acro? The only advice I can get off the net is 'not too tight', but that doesn't mean a lot to someone like me who doesn't do this for a living
. I thought about piling some bricks on the end of an acro and then trying to tighten it to gauge how hard it has to be, but that sounds pretty dangerous , so I'm looking for a rule of thumb for someone who's never touched an acro in their life.
2) The other thing I'd like to know is if there's anything you can get pre-mixed specifically for putting over lintels, which is guaranteed not to shrink, for someone like me who's useless at judging mortar mixes. I was thinking maybe that crack stitching resin might work, or I could use the resin anchor stuff. I've had lintels put in by builders in the past and most of them have dropped a couple of lines of bricks, so if that's what the professionals do I'm not confident in my own abilities on this and I'd like to get it right.
thanks as always,
S.
I decided to use a strongboy before I remove the wooden lintel, but there's a couple of details I'm not sure about.
1) How hard to tighten the acro? The only advice I can get off the net is 'not too tight', but that doesn't mean a lot to someone like me who doesn't do this for a living
. I thought about piling some bricks on the end of an acro and then trying to tighten it to gauge how hard it has to be, but that sounds pretty dangerous , so I'm looking for a rule of thumb for someone who's never touched an acro in their life.2) The other thing I'd like to know is if there's anything you can get pre-mixed specifically for putting over lintels, which is guaranteed not to shrink, for someone like me who's useless at judging mortar mixes. I was thinking maybe that crack stitching resin might work, or I could use the resin anchor stuff. I've had lintels put in by builders in the past and most of them have dropped a couple of lines of bricks, so if that's what the professionals do I'm not confident in my own abilities on this and I'd like to get it right.
thanks as always,
S.
