I'm looking at installing a concrete lintel into a new opening i'm making in a Cotswold stone wall. Wall is about 6 inches of stone, then 6 inches of rubble, then breeze block internally, so only looking at the lintel for the outside part. Naturally it's built with lime mortar, but I'm wondering how essential this is for installing the lintel itself?
The wall is inside a glasshouse and gets hot quickly, so I'm concerned about being able to effectively get lime mortar to cure slowly in that environment. With Lime I'd still look to keep it under damp hessian for a week etc., but there still feels like there's room for failure. If I'm only using mortar where it's contacting the lintel and the adjacent stones, is that likely to cause a problem in the future? I know it's not totally by the book, but it's very easy for these things to be over simplified and talked about in absolute terms when maybe it'd really not make much difference in practise.
And a concrete lintel itself is fine in such a wall, right?
The wall is inside a glasshouse and gets hot quickly, so I'm concerned about being able to effectively get lime mortar to cure slowly in that environment. With Lime I'd still look to keep it under damp hessian for a week etc., but there still feels like there's room for failure. If I'm only using mortar where it's contacting the lintel and the adjacent stones, is that likely to cause a problem in the future? I know it's not totally by the book, but it's very easy for these things to be over simplified and talked about in absolute terms when maybe it'd really not make much difference in practise.
And a concrete lintel itself is fine in such a wall, right?
