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Brick and Mortar Cracking in Garage Flat Arches

Brick Doctor Masons see a lot of cracking issues over Garage flat arches. Some of them are simple defection issues to more complex where undersized lintels or poorly executed designs cause support column issues and/or undersized lintels cause serious structural issues.

Let’s start off the discussion with a simple settlement crack.

This lintel deflected and the brick and mortar settled and cracked. Notice the crack is bigger at the bottom where the deflection occurred.

This lintel stabilized allowing a Brick Doctor mason to cut out broken brick and mortar for a simple repair. Notice the great job of matching brick and mortar to the existing home.

Brick and mortar are quite inflexible. Steel bends as it is loaded. A wood beam bends when it is loaded. Brick and mortar do not.

Because of this, lintels supporting brick and mortar must be designed quite stiff to not deflect beyond the yield limits of brick and mortar. Lintels supporting masonry should be designed so that their deflection does not exceed 1/600 of the clear span under the superimposed live and dead loads supported by a particular lintel. 

Bearing surface of the lintel is critical

The amount of lintel bearing on the brick column is also critical to proper design.
The stress in the masonry supporting each end of the lintel should not exceed the allowable stress for the type of masonry used.

Every square inch of bearing surface is critical and this failure at the lintel bearing point points to stress failure.

There is also a failed cold joint here of mortar running through the column and the wall. This issue relates to irreversible moisture expansion of the brick also constrained by the hard point around the garage opening.

We go into much detail on the natural forces which cause brick to often crack, and the flexible joints used to absorb movement in brick and mortar. We talk about expansion joints and control joints here.

Here the garage column has been supported to proper elevations so the brick and mortar and structural issues can be addressed for a reliable solution to this problem.

Structural work is complete the brick and mortar has been replaced and an expansion joint has been installed up through the brick column and up through the upper story.

The lintel below has utterly failed. Poor design from the start.

Brick Doctor masons, thankfully, don’t see structural failure of a lintel to this level very often. This condition was really dangerous until the total collapse.

This lintel had to be completely replaced as you will see in the next images.

A new heavy duty lintel has been carefully tied to the plywood shear wall that has been added over the original wood beam.

New lintel has been secured at numerous locations with steel strapping and lag bolts. There will not be a repeat of lintel failure after this repair

Here is another lintel failure over a garage due to lightweight steel. The columns are also quite narrow and the lintel was broken up over the separate columns. The bricks and mortar cracked with differential movement of the lintels over the three garage door span. The solution was the installation of a one piece heavy duty lintel to support the load of the brick and mortar repair.

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Here is the completed repair.

New lintel is being positioned for securing to the building structure.

Brick and Mortar repairs underway over the new lintel

You can see just how lightweight the original 3 lintels were.

Lintel issues over garage flat arches can sometimes be solved by better securement to the underlying structure.

Bricks are being cut out of the wall so that new fasteners can help secure the lintel to the garage wall structure. The lintel will again be strapped to the structure where you see the higher second course
of bricks being removed.

Here stone blocks are being cut out of the wall to secure the lintel from deflection.

How Can We Help You with Flat Arch Issues over your Garage?

Over the years, Brick Doctor has done just about everything when it comes to repairing and restoring flat arches over garage spans. We know what we are doing. Let us know if we can help you.

Don’t take our word for it. (Check out our testimonials and reviews). And, even better, ask a neighbor for a recommendation. We have done tens of thousands of projects all over the DFW Metroplex since 1986, including for some of your neighbors.

Have any particular questions or concerns about the flat arch over your garage? We can help.

Brick Doctor is always ready to answer your questions, address your concerns or provide an estimate for repairs designed for the scope of your needs.

We look forward to assisting you. Reach out today. Contact us

972-234-0900
817-540-1800
info@brickdoctor.com

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