In some cases apartment renovation suggests a redesign. Most often, such an operation is associated with the transfer or change of doorways. How to make such an opening in a brick wall? Errors in the design of this element or in the repair work can be too expensive, so you need to study the issue in detail and carefully.
General requirements for the arrangement of doorways
When designing an opening for a new door, it is important to follow some rules. Even if a non-standard design solution is used, the main parameters of building codes must be taken into account. Otherwise, there is a high risk that the brick wall will not withstand the load after the changes made and will crack, pinch the door frame or, in the worst case scenario, simply fall apart. In addition, it is unlikely that it will be possible to legitimize the redevelopment of an apartment where the doorways do not comply with building codes. And this will entail serious difficulties if this apartment needs to be sold.
There are the following rules when designing doorways:
- The height of the opening is most often 200–210 cm. It is possible to make it higher, but this is hardly advisable: there are no standard doors of this size on sale, and the lintel above the opening may be too thin.
- The maximum width of the opening depends on the type of wall and the floor on which the apartment is located. The lower the floor, the smaller the width of the door can be made. So, for apartments on the lower floor, the opening in a brick wall, if it is a carrier, cannot be wider than 90 cm.
- Cutting a door hole in the wall invariably leads to a partial loss of strength of the latter. This loss must somehow be compensated, so the wall is strengthened by redistributing the load on it. To do this, a reinforcing jumper made of wood or reinforced concrete must be erected above the opening.
To evenly distribute the load, it is better to make the doorway as close to the center of the wall as possible.
Types of doorways
At the design stage of the redevelopment, you should decide on the appearance of the new doors. Their shape will depend not only on the tastes of the owner, but also on the material of the wall.
- A standard-type portal or an expanded portal for double doors is the main type of doorway used in partitions made of brick or foam block. The rectangular shape will allow you to make an opening, the boundaries of which will coincide with the joints in the masonry. This will make it possible not only to make the process less laborious, but also to avoid the destruction of wall elements outside the contour of the punched hole.
- Openings in the form of an arch or with complex contours are recommended for use in plasterboard partitions. This material is easy to process, moreover, for such holes it is not required to build a reinforcing jumper. It is possible to make an arched hole in a brick or reinforced concrete wall, but this is a very laborious process. Since it is not easy to choose the shape of such doors, they most often do without them, leaving the passage open.
Marking and knocking out a door hole in a brick wall
Having decided on the dimensions of the punched hole, you can proceed to its marking on the wall plane:
- First, all existing coatings, such as plaster or wallpaper, must be removed from the wall so that the brickwork can be seen directly.
- Using a square and a meter ruler, it is necessary to adjust the contour of the opening so that it coincides with the horizontal boundaries of the bricks.
Do not cut the brick lengthwise, as this will affect its ability to withstand the load.
- Under the reinforcing jumper, a support area should be provided that protrudes 15 cm into the wall on both sides of the punched opening.
When marking, one should not forget that the gaps around the perimeter of the door frame in the process door installation will be filled with mounting foam, so the opening must be made 2–3 cm wider.
The process of forming the opening
It is recommended to reduce the impact loads as much as possible when forming a hole in the wall. Ideally, the entire contour of the future doorway can be cut with a special diamond cutter. But the thickness of the disk of this tool may not be enough, and it is not easy to get it. In this case, a simple grinder or puncher can replace it. They drill holes in the brickwork, and then carefully knock out the bricks with a chisel and a sledgehammer.
- The first step is to create a hole for the reinforcing beam. In this case, it is easiest to drill holes along the contour using a puncher equipped with a hole cutter or a large-diameter drill, and then carefully knock out the bricks.
- The beam can be just a wooden board 50 mm thick, which must be fixed with concrete. But it is better to use a double-sided channel or a structure made of metal corners welded together by jumpers and tightened with bolts.
The simplest option seems to be the use of a channel, but many professionals do not recommend using it. The point is its rounded inner edges, which will not ensure a snug fit of the bricks to the beam, and it will be problematic to fill the voids with cement mortar after installing the channel. The design of the corners will require more work, but is devoid of this drawback.
- After the beam is installed and fixed with mortar, you can take a break from the repair work until the cement dries.
- After that, you can continue knocking out bricks using a puncher and a chisel. Parsing of masonry is carried out from top to bottom.
In no case should you knock out bricks with a sledgehammer from the bottom up, as this is fraught with serious injuries when the masonry collapses!
Strengthening the doorway
After the contour of the future door frame is knocked out, the edges of the hole should be trimmed. The fallen halves of the bricks should be inserted back and fixed with cement mortar. The structure is strengthened by horizontal posts, for which it is better to use corners superimposed on both sides of the wall and fastened together by horizontal strips welded along the thickness of the opening. Also, the corners are fixed with studs that pass through through holes in the wall.
