What Causes Cracks Above the Garage Door?

If cracks are climbing up the brick from the corners of your garage door, or the brick above the opening looks like it is starting to sag, the problem is usually a piece of steel you cannot see: the lintel.

What a lintel is, and why it fails

The lintel is the steel beam that spans the top of your garage door opening and carries the weight of all the brick above it. It sits out of sight, so most people never think about it, right up until it starts to fail. When it does, the brick it was holding up has nowhere to go but down and apart, and that shows as cracking above the door.

A lintel usually fails for one of a few reasons: the steel has rusted over the years and lost its strength, it was undersized for the load from the start, it was never properly bolted to the framing, or the footing or center column under the opening has settled and pulled everything down with it.

Warning signs

• Stair-step cracks climbing up from the corners of the garage door
• A sag or dip in the brick across the top of the opening
• Vertical cracks or gaps in the brick above the door
• The door frame separating from the brick around it
• A garage door that has started sticking, or no longer sits square

How we fix it

We reinforce the support above the door without tearing all the brick out, which matters, because matching and replacing masonry is expensive and slow. Depending on what we find, we add steel support and bolt it into the existing framing, lift the opening back to level with hydraulic jacks, and where the footing has failed, drive steel piers to stabilize the base. Then we repair and match the brick and mortar that the movement cracked.

One contractor, structure and masonry both, done so it looks like it never happened. If the brick above your garage door is cracking, have it looked at before more of it lets go. See our garage lintel repair page for more.