Lintel and Sill Replacement in Evansville

Lintel replacement in Evansville runs $400 to $1,500 per opening: the brick above the window or door shored, the rusted steel angle cut out, a new galvanized lintel set with proper bearing, the brick reset in matched mortar, and the joints repointed. Sill replacement runs $300 to $1,200 each. Most crews carry a $500 to $800 minimum. If you have a stair-step crack climbing from the corner of a window, this is the page, not the tuckpointing page, and a photo of the crack settles it.

Step cracks over the window: why it is the lintel

Every brick opening has something carrying the brick above it. On Evansville’s 1880s to 1920s houses in Riverside, Bayard Park, and Lamasco that was often a brick jack arch, a segmental arch, or a limestone lintel, and those tend to fail by settlement or by mortar loss. From the 1920s on, and universally in post-war construction, it is a steel angle iron, bare or painted, resting on the brick at each side of the opening.

Steel rusts. Rust occupies several times the volume of the steel it consumed, and as the angle swells it lifts the course of brick sitting on it. That lift has to be relieved somewhere, and it relieves itself along the weakest line, the mortar joints, in a diagonal stair-step running up and away from the corner of the opening. Under the same window, the limestone sill that was bedded flat now carries an uneven load and cracks. The pattern is so consistent that a mason can call it from the sidewalk.

Evansville’s weather accelerates all of it. NOAA’s 1991-2020 normals count 92.6 nights a year at or below 32 degrees and only 15.5 days that stay frozen, so roughly 77 times a winter water in the crack over the lintel freezes and pries it wider, then thaws and runs down onto the steel. The 45.31 inches of annual precipitation, with the wettest months in March, April, and May, keeps the steel wet through the whole cycle. A lintel that showed a rust line ten years ago is a stair-step crack today and a bulging soldier course in another five.

What you will see

• Stair-step crack from the top corner of a window or door, following the joints diagonally upward. The lintel.
• Horizontal crack along the bed joint right above the opening, sometimes with the course above pushed out. The lintel, advanced.
• Rust staining on the brick face under the top of the opening, or a visible rust flake line where the steel meets the brick. Early lintel.
• Sagging soldier course (the vertical bricks over an opening) with open head joints. Lintel or arch failure.
• Cracked sill with the crack near the middle or at a jamb. Usually the lintel above, sometimes a settled jamb.
• Window that binds or a door that no longer latches. The frame is carrying load it should not be.

Repointing any of these without touching the steel is the most common wasted masonry dollar in this city. It looks fixed until the next winter.

How a lintel replacement goes

1. Confirm the diagnosis. Crack pattern, rust evidence, a tap along the top course for hollow sound, and a check of the sill and the opposite corner. On an old house, confirm whether it is steel, a brick arch, or stone, because each is repaired differently.
2. Shore. Needles or a temporary support carry the brick above the opening. On a jack arch, the arch itself is supported while the abutments are checked.
3. Cut out. Mortar joints around the lintel course are cut, the brick over the lintel is removed and saved, and the rusted angle is cut out. Cavity and weep condition get checked while the wall is open.
4. Set the new lintel. Galvanized or stainless angle sized to the span, with at least 4 to 6 inches of bearing on each side, on a mortar bed, with a flashing and weep holes above it where the wall has a cavity.
5. Reset the brick. Salvaged units go back in matched mortar (lime-based on pre-1930 brick, Type N on mid-century, Type S on modern), joints packed and tooled to match the wall.
6. Repoint the crack. The stair-step joints, now closed, are ground to depth and repointed like any tuckpointing job.
7. Sill. If the sill under the opening cracked, it is pinned and patched or replaced at the same visit.
8. Cure. Protected from freezing, misted in heat, never placed with the wall below 40 degrees and falling.

Brick arches and limestone lintels on the oldest houses are repaired rather than replaced where possible: the arch is re-centered and repointed, spalled voussoirs replaced from salvage, and a cracked stone lintel pinned or, when past saving, replaced with new Salem Limestone cut to the original section.

Sills

Sill replacement is the companion job. The sill’s work is to shed water outward and away from the joints below, and it does that with a slope and a drip groove. A cracked sill lets water into the wall below the window, and a sill that has lost its slope holds water for the freeze-thaw cycle to work on. The limestone page covers pin-and-patch versus reset versus replace; the short version is $300 to $600 to pin and patch, $500 to $900 to reset, and $700 to $1,200 to replace with new cut limestone.

Pricing

Span, height, and how many courses have to come out drive the number. Batch openings: a ranch with four rusted lintels across the front is one scaffold setup and one mortar match, and prices far better than four visits. The pricing page has the full table.

Where the lintels are failing

• Riverside, Washington Avenue, Bayard Park, Culver, Lamasco (1850s to 1920s): brick jack arches and limestone lintels, failing by settlement and mortar loss; steel where a later owner enlarged an opening.
• Lincolnshire and the 1920s to 1950s East Side: early steel angles, now 70 to 100 years old, often unpainted from the start. This is where the most stair-step cracks in Evansville live.
• Post-war ranches and Newburgh’s 1960s and 1970s subdivisions: galvanizing was inconsistent, and picture-window and garage-door lintels with long spans are the common failure.

Permits, review, and licensing

A lintel is structural, so a permit is often required, and the fee passes through at cost. Evansville and Vanderburgh County license masons through the Building Commission, with a $25,000 bond and $300,000 in liability insurance behind the brick and masonry contractor license; Henderson, Kentucky requires a city specialty license for masonry. In the Riverside Preservation Area, in-kind lintel and sill work that puts the brick back to match is generally ordinary maintenance under city code 2.106.100, but a street-facing opening is worth a call to the Historic Preservation Officer before the wall comes open. Repairs arranged through this site are performed by licensed, insured local masonry contractors.

Timing

April through November for the mortar work; NWS Paducah puts Evansville’s average last freeze at April 6 and first at October 29. A stair-step crack noticed in September should be fixed before winter widens it.

Crews replace lintels and sills across Evansville and out to Newburgh, Henderson, Boonville, Mount Vernon, Princeton, and Haubstadt. Send a straight-on photo of the whole opening, a close-up of the crack with a coin for scale, and a shot of the sill, and you will get the lintel-or-mortar answer and the number. The blog post on step cracks shows the crack patterns side by side.