Wooden lintel replacement

Wooden lintels were a major part of the rushed construction of many terraced houses in South Wales for both miners, steel worker and dockers.

At the time large heavy pieces of timber were freely available not only for the construction of terraced houses but also as pit props. The houses would be constructed of stone and the doors and windows would have had a wooden lintel placed across the top and then the stone construction continued above as the upstairs rooms were completed.
Many years on these its time for wooden lintel replacement as the lintols have seriously deteriorated in places as rainwater seeps through the cracks in the large stone blocks that were often quarried locally.

The wooden lintels were often rendered over to give a cosmetic finish hiding the any deterioration in the wood and a problem would only be observed when as a first sign of a problem being when the render starts to “blow“ or come away from the wood becoming unattached.

The following sequence of photographs shows how the the wooden lintel can be replaced with a long-lasting concrete reinforced lintel and made good. Great care must be taken when working on lintels as they support a considerable weight of stone above them. In this instance wooden timbers were bolted to the front of the house to support the heavy stone window sill above. The wooden lintel replacement commenced  as the old wooden lintel was cut out and removed and can be seen to have rotted and deteriorated.

The gap between the over the new concrete lentil was closed with concrete blocks and the final gap between the lintel and the block work dry packed with a three-to-one mixture of sharp sand and cement. Then all that needed to be done was to re-render over the whole finish and paint to complete the job.

Other projects completed include asbestos cement garage re-roofing