Cracked lintel in new (old) house

After moving into our new house a few weeks ago, l have noticed a vertical crack through the sandstone lintel above our basement kitchen window. The crack is around 1/3rd across the stone, and has been filled with a clear silicone by the previous occupants to prevent water ingress (l guess). The window below it opens fine, and there are no other signs of cracking, bowing walls, cracked pointing or stone etc. The walls are sandstone (irregular sized stones), around 1.5 feet thick throughout. The house was renovated around 12 years ago, although built in the late 1800’s.

We had a structural surveyor do a report on the house before we bought it (RICS approved), however it was not picked up on. Do l have any comeback on this. Alternatively, what are my options?

normal practice is, I think, to glue a piece of glass across the crack and see if it shatters.

If it doesn’t it’s old movement.

If it were me I’d just monitor it for a bit and see if it changes.

You *could* ask Building control to look at it. In my experience they are very helpful. Even if they say it needs replacing, it’s not a huge job, some Acrow props to take the weight, chisel the old one out, slide in a new one and repack with mortar.

You’d expect this to be spotted by a surveyor, tho I dunno if it’s covered by a structural survey (again, you’d think so!)

Certainly worth contacting the surveyor for his answers etc .. but not a massive job to replace

The crack is around 1/3rd across the stone

Can you clarify that? Do you mean it’s 1/3 of the way from one side of the window from the other, or it goes from the bottom of the lintel to 1/3 the way up (or even from the outside to 1/3 of the way in)?

Where it is along the length, how far through and whether it’s parallel sided, tapered, etc, are all important in working out how structurally significant it is.

Unlikely to be a major problem. I see a lot of “damaged” houses and cracked stone lintels are quite common. They don’t often reflect a serious structural problem. If the on the inner face of the window opening spanned by the lintel is sound, it would indicate no movement has occurred since the room was decorated. Glass tell-tales are very old skool and if one was fitted it would be likely to crack just due to thermal movements, which would not necessarily indicate a problem. Lintels don’t usually carry a huge amount of weight. If you project a 45 degree line upward and toward the window centre from either side of the opening, it’s only the weight inside the triangle that’s actually supported by the lintel.

Get a structural engineer to have a look if you’re worried, but I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep unless you see signs of progressive movement, which will be evident in the form of cracks in the stonework immediately above the lintel itself (in, or at the edges of teh imaginary triange described above).

Krapknees’s house this morning:

I’ve had a couple of new lintels fitted after realising the outer walls had none in them and had relied on the wooden window frames to support the weight and that non reinforced PVC had been used when they were replaced before we bought the house. Nothing collapsed in the 12 years it was like that and it can always be fixed even if it does need replacing. And if it does I’d be looking for at least a refund if you payed for a strutural survey.

Difficult to say without seeing a picture, but you could probably use a Helifix repair – chase a groove through the lintel, insert stainless steel bar and fill with colour matched mortar / resin. You can also run Helifix bars through the stonework above, effectively making the stone into an additional lintel.

I’d hazard a pretty educated guess it’s going no where!

I’d not worry too much – the silicon is probably there to keep the water out and if it is moving there’ll be plenty of evidence of it.