wrote:

Hi,

I am getting a bit doubtful about doing this myself but I thought I'd
see if there is anyone who has !

I live in an 1870's property that has signs of settlement, the
property is of solid stone construction with some quite large stones,
e the lintels are 36" by 8".

These have showed sign of cracking, the crack is the height of the
stop but does not appear to be all the way through. I have been
speaking to a builder who I casually know and he has suggested that he
has seen three ways of fixing this. These are

1. "Stitching in" - This seems to be placing steel bars above the
cracked stones so that they then take the weight of the structure and
hence no additional weight on the cracked stone so they wont get
worse.

2."Stapling" - cut about 4 inches off the front of the stone and then
fire in staples which will stop re-enforce the stone and prevent the
cracking getting worse. The 4" that were removed are replaced by a
stone mix which faces off the repair.

3.Replacing the stone is also an option but have you seen the price of
stone these days !!!


Anyone done any of these ?
If so comments appreciated...in fact any comments appreciated,

Cheers
l.c

You're in luck, its not usually necessary to do anything. Lots of old
properties were built with no lintel at all, and catastrophic failures
are very rare, though cracking is common. The lintel is normally a
backup device rather than the primary support. Although a split lintel
has much less strength than a whole one, there are still 2 mechanisms
in operation that continue to give it a backup support role.
1. An 8" high lintel would have to move sideways in order to mvoe
downward, just like an arch. Arches are pretty stable, 8" split
lintels ditto.
2. As the lintel ends overlap the window edges, there is a lever
effect in operation - for the centre to drop, the brick/stone above
the lintel ends would
have to rise up, and that just isnt likely to occur.

If its a big wide opening you may need a repair, but in most cases
its not really an issue.

As an illustration of the lintel's backup role, I still remember a
large house built with no lintels anywhere, not even over the double
width garage(s). Decades later the only issue that cropped up was some
cracking to a garage that needed repair.


NT