Lintel Repair and Cracks Above Windows, Doors and Garage Openings

Look at where it starts and what is beside it. Settlement cracking generally runs up from the foundation. Lintel cracking starts at the top corner of an opening and steps diagonally up and away from it, and it usually arrives with one of two other signs: a rust stain bleeding down from that corner, or a brick course above the opening that is no longer level. Put a level on the course directly over the window, because a lift of even a fraction of an inch tells you the cause is under it. The National Park Service lists corrosion of iron and steel wall reinforcement separately from differential settlement of foundations among the causes of cracking, and it names a different remedy for each, so this is worth getting right before you take a quote from anybody.

Because the thing that made it is still growing. Unprotected mild steel oxidizes rapidly when it gets wet, and the rust scale that forms can occupy up to ten times the volume of the original metal. A lintel is enclosed by brick, so that expansion goes into the wall: measured examples include a beam flange that went from three eighths of an inch thick to one and five eighths, more than four times its original thickness, and rust jacking that displaced adjacent masonry by three quarters of an inch. Three quarters of an inch is not a hairline, and it lifts a course out of level. Worse, the corroded surface is more porous, so it holds moisture and drives the next round of corrosion. Sealing the crack keeps the water where it is doing the damage and hides the next quarter inch of movement, which is why the published remedy is replacing the component and rebuilding around the opening rather than filling.

No, and homeowners are rarely told this. The engineering view is that significant rust scale, while visually notable and potentially damaging to the masonry in contact with it, does not necessarily mean enough original material has been lost to render the member inadequate, and section loss of 10 to 20 percent is the figure often cited as the point at which the element should be assessed further. Where scale is extensive it has to be removed to determine the actual loss, and both the location and the extent decide whether the answer is repair or replacement. So a stained, scaling lintel with the brick above it still in line is often a clean and recoat. The reason not to leave it indefinitely is that the expansion damages the brick well before the steel runs short of strength, so the cheap window closes first.

Because that is when steel angles became the normal way to carry brick over an opening, and because this climate supplies both things corrosion needs. Ranked by share of housing built between 1940 and 1959, this county's leaders are Galeville at 60.7 percent, Seneca Knolls at 58.9, Mattydale at 54.6, Westvale at 51.3 and Lyncourt at 47.1, and the corrosion literature specifically flags masonry buildings of the early 1900s onward where unprotected structural steel sits in contact with the exterior wall. Then the weather: a normal year here brings the daily low to freezing on 129.5 days while the daily high stays below freezing on only 45.7, so the temperature crosses in both directions about 84 times, and a normal 123.8 inches of snow melts into the wall while it does. That is a corrosion schedule rather than bad luck.

Only if nothing goes over the new steel, and that is the question to ask. The Brick Industry Association states that proper consideration must always be given to moisture control wherever there are openings in masonry walls, and that there must always be a mechanism to channel water in the wall to the outside. It specifies continuous flashing over the angle, between the steel and the exterior facing, and weepholes in the facing at lintel level regardless of whether flashing is used. New York's residential code requires flashing at lintels and at exterior window and door openings, and weepholes at no more than 33 inches on center immediately above the flashing. It also suggests galvanized steel for harsh climates and says that where that is not done the steel needs periodic maintenance. So if the answer to what goes over the new lintel is only steel and brick, you are buying the same failure with a later date on it.

Assume yes and confirm at the right counter. New York's regulation lets a city, village or town exempt repairs from its permit requirement, but only where the exemption is expressly set out in its own enforcement program, and the exemption cannot cover work that has an impact on fire and life safety such as any part of the structural system. A lintel holds up the wall above an opening, so replacing one is not an ordinary repair however small the window is. There is no single office for this metro either: the authority is your village if the house sits inside an incorporated village and your town otherwise, which is why Liverpool, East Syracuse, Solvay, North Syracuse, Baldwinsville, Fayetteville, Manlius, Camillus, Marcellus and Skaneateles villages each run their own counter separately from the towns around them. And an exemption from a permit has never been an exemption from the code that applies.