Catnic thermally broken lintel alternatives

[Olf]

Catnic thermally broken heavy duty lintel for 150mm cavity spanning 3600mm wide French door ordered at beginning of May, as the very fist thing. Was quoted 4 weeks delivery, which was comfortable.

End of June (already past the scheduled date), checking for update, answer: not made yet, shortage of steel. Couple of more updates, one pointing to the week beginning 19th of July (as in now). Fresh update: not made, no steel to roll it. I'm not going to speculate what really is going on, but need to start with plan B, as the walls are now erected and only the section over the doors is missing, builders were pi$$ed and left for another job, making me *&^%$£.

Because of cavity width (not 100mm, so building merchants don't have anything available), span (more than 2m, so building merchants don't have anything available) and my desire to have it possibly not thermally bridged, I'm thinking about 2 separate lintels for each leaf, using RSJs (as these need 'only' cutting to length).

Any other ideas?

Do I need to involve SE, or will it be enough to get steel merchant to provide figures just to demonstrate that load capacities are equal or better than the limits already calculated for Catnic lintel?

 

 

 

[markc]

Sounds like an excuse. Yes steel prices are up but no shortage of supply from Germany, Spain or Italy, very little British available but thats because the greenies and our government dont want dirty smelly industry spoiling our carbon promises.  Cheap Chinese steel is harder to get at the moment but thats the same with most things.

[saveasteading]

You should tell the SE what you propose. The BCO will likely want the SE say-so, and there may be something else significant that only he would know about.

If obv. OK then he may simply email back that your proposal  is acceptable.

 

Catnic is owned by Tata, so getting steel should not be difficult for them.

Covid or Brexit more likely, so your idea is sensible.

[Olf]

2 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Catnic is owned by Tata, so getting steel should not be difficult for them.

Exactly, and that what angers me.

They just lough in the face: they prefer to supply large developers with standard stock and/or with increased price of raw material try to encourage to cancel an order than would be now at small markup or even loss. I've had these problems throughout the build, with noticable similar case when Tarmac called 3h before sheduled delivery to fill foundations to say that they 'ran of cement' - which was just smoking pile of bs.

My biggest problem is lack of communication: if they said it is another 8-10 weeks, I would put all the resources in a backup plan. But if it may show up any day, but they just don't have an idea what is happening on their own backyard, then I'm not so happy to pay SE £££ and risk having 2 sets of lintels, in case Catnic shows up.

[PeterW]

Birtley do a thermally broken lintel - have you checked with them …? eLintels do them if you want a price 

 

https://www.elintels.co.uk/supatherm-lintel-st150

[saveasteading]

The Engineer may not even charge you if you have done the prep and it is clearly a good proposal.

If he specified Catnic, tell him it is not available, but you have come up with...this.

[Olf]

I checked lintel alternatives, all seem to quote '4 weeks delivery' which I believe was realistic in good old times, but I know it too well now is a wishful thinking at best (due to raw materials, labour and delivery shortages to start with).

 

I was originally thinking about 2 separate steel beams, but now are leaning towards glulams - any recommendations for suppliers for those, preferably close to Oxfordshire?