What is Lintels
A Lintel is a beam which is laced over the opening such as doors, windows, cupboards etc., It is a horizontal member whose work is to support the load coming from the above masonry. Width of the lintels is equal to the wall and both the ends of the lintel build in the wall.
Types Of Lintels
Lintels are classified based on their material of construction
1 Wooden Lintel
2 Steel Lintel
3 Concrete Lintel
4 Stone Lintel
5 Brick Lintel / Reinforced Brick Lintel
1 Wooden Lintel
Wooden lintel or we can call it as timber lintel. It purely made out of wood. This lintel were mostly used in olden construction, but now a day it replaced by the modern material. However in hilly areas they are still using it where wood is easily available.
If the length of the opening is too long then two or more pieces of wood is join to provide a lintel for whole opening.
This lintel sometime provided with a mild steel at the top and the bottom of the wood to make it strengthen.
The main reasons for not using this wooden lintel now a days is, its costly, structurally week and vulnerable to fire and less durable.
2 Steel Lintel
Steel lintels are suitable when superimposed loads are too heavy. These are great when we have wide opening.
Depending upon the requirement, Steel lintel can be consists of rolled steel joints or channel section. we can used one single channel or combination of two or more.
When used singly, the steel joist is either embedded in concrete or cladded with stone facing to keep the width same as width of wall. When more than one units are placed side by side, they are kept in position by tube separators.
3 Concrete Lintel
At present construction, Reinforced concrete lintels are widely used for opening in doors, windows etc. This lintel is suitable for all type of load and any width of span.
Main reinforcement provided at the bottom of the lintel and made a crank at the both the ends
Reinforced concrete lintel are widely used because of its high strength, rigidity, fire resistance and hassle free construction.
4 Stone Lintel
this one the most commonly used lintel in the construction specially in the area where stone are easily available. These are also provide at the opening of the brick masonry.
The depth of stone lintel is kept to 10cm / meter of span with a minimum value of 15cm. They are used up to the span of 2 meters.
This can be provided as a single piece of more than one piece. This widely used in the mountainous building as it weight too much and due to non-availability of other construction material.
This is not suitable in the cities as the transportation is very complex task.
5 Brick Lintel / reinforced Brick Lintel
These are used when there is less opening and light load is imposed. The depth of the lintel will be of 10cm (one brick size) of may be keep to 20cm as per the requirement.
If the load is little bit on higher size or the span is more than 1m then reinforced brick lintel are used in the opening. The brick are so arranged that 2 to 3 cm wide space is left between adjacent bricks for the insertion of mild steel bars as reinforcement and 1:3 mortar is used to fill up the gaps.
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