How much does lintel replacement normally cost?

kveta

We're in the process of buying a 3 bed house which needs some repair work carried out in order to release the whole mortgage (the lenders are holding back £1000).

The main work to be done is the house needs rewiring, and a lintel above the front window requires replacing (although the surveyor actually said there was no lintel there at all, and we needed one put in - but surely no lintel would = collapsed property?)

Unfortunately, the builder who visited the property to provide us with a quote on lintel replacement has got back to us today to say he couldn't access the property (visit was on Friday last week, and arranged when we got the mortgage paperwork through, so not sure why he waited until today to tell us), but it would normally cost about £900 to do the work. This sounds very very low to us, but we are FTBs, so we may just be assuming all building work costs more than we have.

We need to submit the mortgage paper work by monday or will loose our offer. I've phoned round some local builders to get one to actually provide a proper quote, but none have time before friday this week, and the estate agents can't let them in anyway.

Aside from banging our heads on a brick wall, we're now just having to chance it, and hope we can afford the repair work when we get a real quote, but it would be very useful to hear other people's experiences.

thanks

ormus

where do you live?
around here, i would expect an average window lintel to be done for 500 quid or less.
the lintels only cost 50/100 quid. ish.

kveta

thanks - we're in the SE, so expect to pay a lot for everything, unfortunately.

luckily we've found a builder (through a friend in the trade) who can view the place tomorrow and hopefully give us a quote, and the estate agents have agreed to let them have the keys for the morning.

fingers crossed we get a sensible response - my husband's colleague told us he'd had a lintel replaced and paid ~£4K for it, so we were panicking a bit, especially as they are in a different part of the country. I think there may be some crossed wires somewhere as can't see how one lintel replacement could cost 4 grand, but like I say, we're total novices here, and are canvassing opinions far and wide...

thanks again

dave82_2

I took the wooden one out this doorway and replaced with a concrete one myself http://i51.tinypic.com/idddab.jpg

The lintle cost me about £12. I could probably just have put bricks in since we got the dootway bricked up anyway LOL I certainly hope it won't cost £4k we got a door opened up and a steel put in for about £1k. Can't see it being more than this so £900 might be about right?

I am guessing a window lintle might need to be a bit meatier.

You might need to get sign off from BC so check that out as well.

Snidge

I am a builder and have years and years of experience, I read and read because you can never know everything!

Repairing and replacing lintels is a different task every time and other things have to be taken into consideration. Oddly I have just been to look at the lintels on the front of a house today. In this instance, the lower window lintel is taking the weight of the whole of the front of the house and roof. It is cracking, and so is the lintel above the upper window. Why? because its been bodged many years ago beyond belief. To an experienced eye every job is different and the costs can vary. Ask the builder to breakdown the cost and explain it out THEN you will be able to see if you have a chancer or a builder....