Infill to cover missaligned brickwork - acceptable?

Hi folks,

I wanted to get some opinions (maybe a couple of professional ones too) on something that I have noticed on my house. The house is supposed to have brick infills abover all the windows and doors. I have noticed though that they decided to use a wooden infill above the alfresco doorway. At first I thought this was odd as this is the only one however I now realise why they did it. The brickwork either side of the doorway is not at the same level. On one side they have used about 1.5 inches of mortar below the first course and on the other about 0.5 of an inch. The result is that above the doorway the bricks don't run parallel with top of the door. On one side the gap is one full brick course and the the other its about an inch short. The solution is to run the steel lintel a course higher and fill the gap with a wooden infill. Only problem is that the infill will have to be cut at an angle to match the gap. Now that I have noticed this my eyes keep zooming in on it every time I see the alfresco.

So what do you think? Is this acceptable? Is this normal or an accepted occurance according to the regulations?
I don't see them re-doing all the brickwork but at the same time I think it looks ****.

I have a same thing in our contract and our inspector was saying the way the have done it is normal, for us it is every single window and door around the house that doesn't line up.

I will also wait and see if there is any professional answer to your question, so I can also make use of it.

it looks like the lintel was placed were it is because the top of the door jam dosnt line up with the top of the nearest brick in height.
maybe? from what i can tell from picture

Hi there,
I agree with you, looks awful. We had similar problems, we just said we coundn't live with it and they pulled down the entire wall and rebuilt it! From your picture it looks like it is still out of alignment next to the ceiling, it would bug me. like you I tend to focus on whats out! Maybe its different in the east, with whats in the contract etc. Ours just must be according to the plans but I would certainly ask for them to rebuild, especially as it is just this one door. Worth a go!

Is the front and laundry door the same infill above anyway they can use metal colourbond material to match window so it looks part of window its not that bad have a look around and you will see most builders are the same .

is there an Australian Standard or building regualtion pertaining to such matters? It would seem reasonable that walls etc should be squre and aligned correctly.

I like the answer above - make them tear it down and rebuild it.

I could not live with that either, it would annoy the heck out of me.

We have a little bit of s gap, which SS said they would pack, but not as much as that, I don't think - better check, now!!!!! They have to do what it says on the contract - if there's no 'infill' above the doors, surely it should be bricked !

I thought I bring this topic back as I will have a gap like that above the sliding doors which I do not want.

I was told by my ss that there will be a gap between the sliding door frame and the steel lintel due to the height of the sliding door. The door is 2125mm high and the window head height will be 2150mm high, the door will sit on the slab and when bricking the brick course won't be align with the door for the steel lintel. My ceiling height is 2700mm with 450mm eaves. The builder say they will either fill the gap with timber or an aluminium infill. The window has already been installed but bricking hasn't started yet.

Has anyone who has a 2125mm high sliding door with brick over window that didn't have a gap above their sliding door?? or anyone suggest a way to not have the gap?

Hi

Has anyone had any resolution on this? The majority of our windows have quite a gap above them too. Is this the brickie's mistake in brick levels. How is it resolved neatly?

Normally the doors are placed before the brickwork and they gauge off the top of the door. The thing you need to watch out for is that the windows are also aligned so that their tops are all aligned. This requires some effort to get the base of the windows right.

In my build, I had a 10 mm gap above two doors. I got some bricks re-done (at my expense) to "bend" the brickwork down 10 mm. We went about 5 bricks down. You can hardly tell the "bend" in the bricks, but you can certainly notice the absence of gap above the doors. I think it was a good move on my part.

We have infills over three doors/windows. The rest are all aligned with brickwork. Our bathroom window sits on the bath hob, which means that the top quite align with the other windows. Our sliding door at the back also has to sit at floor level (obviously), so again the top doesn't align with the windows.

The brickies did a dreadful job overall, and a lot of their work was pulled down and redone. We also had most of our windows removed and the frame around them altered to bring them to the right height, as the framing was a bit crap too. The brickwork around these was actually acceptable though, and the height of the doors/windows couldn't be changed, so we opted not to have most of the rear wall demolished and rebuilt. We were already running way behind time..... Instead, our SS had aluminium infills powder coated to match the window/door frames and we're the only ones who know the infills are even there.

Our other non-aligned door was a timber bifold and the gap there was minimal, so a hardwood infill was stained to match and again, nobody else knows it's there. That one wasn't a mistake - all timber doors of this height on other homes built by our builder had an infill as well.

Help-------
We have 60mm gaps above all the windows (between window and steel lintel), is this right? Could anybody please help?
Many thanks.

Do your elevation drawings show infills or anything that might explain it? Any chance you can post a photo?

We paid for brick infills too, but ended up with this gap also. We decided to live with the small infills they provided to cover the gap. Luckily for us, the only aluminium window effected was on the blind side of the house (they filled it with matching white powdercoated something or other). Our other windows effected were wood, and wood infills were provided, stained to match. They look fine. I think it's a reasonably common problem due to brick levels. If you really hate the end result, insist they re-brick. Otherwise, save your energy for another issue

We are faced with the same issue and would appreciate to see a photo of the powder coated infill or angle. If you have one could you please post it?

Our front door also has a gap at the top and our SS said he will use a timber infill. We paid extra to have no infills and are very disappointed with this outcome. Thanks!