How to make a doorway in a brick wall

In some cases apartment repair involves its redevelopment. Most often, this operation is associated with the transfer or change of doorways. How to make such an opening in a brick wall? Mistakes in designing this element or carrying out repair work can be too expensive, so you need to study the issue in detail and carefully.

General requirements for 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 basic parameters of construction standards must be taken into account. Otherwise, there is a great risk that the brick wall will not withstand the load after the changes and crack, clamp 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 meet building standards. And this will entail serious difficulties if this apartment needs to be sold.

The following rules exist when designing doorways:

1. The height of the opening is most often 200–210 cm. You can make it higher, but it is hardly advisable: there are no standard doors of this size on sale, and the jumper over the opening may turn out to be too thin.
2. The maximum width of the opening depends on the type of wall and floor on which the apartment is located. The lower the floor, the smaller the door can be made. So, for apartments on the lower floor, the opening in the brick wall, if it is a bearing, cannot be wider than 90 cm.
3. Cutting a door opening in a wall invariably leads to a partial loss of strength of the latter. This loss must be somehow compensated, so the wall is strengthened by redistributing the load on it. To do this, a reinforcing bridge of wood or reinforced concrete is necessarily erected over the opening.

To evenly distribute the load, the doorway is best made 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 extended 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 time-consuming, but also to avoid the destruction of wall elements outside the contour of the punched hole.
• Apertures in the form of an arch or with complex contours are recommended for use in drywall partitions. This material is easy to process, and there is no need to erect a reinforcing bridge for such holes. You can make an arched hole in a brick or reinforced concrete wall, but this is a very time-consuming process. Since the shape of such doors is not easy to choose, they often do without them, leaving the passage open.

Marking and knocking out a door hole in a brick wall

Having decided on the size of the punched hole, you can proceed to its marking on the wall plane:

• Previously, from the wall, you need to clean off all available coatings, such as plaster or wallpaper, so that you can directly see the brickwork.
• 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.

You can’t cut a brick along, as this will affect its ability to withstand the load.

• Under the reinforcing bridge, an area of ​​the support extending 15 cm into the wall on both sides of the punched opening should be provided.

When marking, one should not forget that the cracks around the perimeter of the door frame in the process door installation will be filled with mounting foam, so that the opening must be made 2-3 cm wider.

Opening process

It is recommended to minimize impact loads 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 getting it is not easy. In this case, a simple grinder or punch can replace it. They drill holes in the brickwork, and then carefully bricks are knocked out with a chisel and sledgehammer.

• The first step is to form a hole for the reinforcing beam. In this case, the easiest way is to drill holes along the contour with a perforator equipped with a core cutter or large-diameter drill, and then carefully knock out the bricks.

• A beam can be just a 50 mm thick wooden board that needs to be fixed with concrete. But it is better to use a double-sided channel or a design of metal corners, welded together by jumpers and tightened with bolts.

The most simple 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 tight fit of bricks to the beam, and filling the voids with cement mortar after installing the channel will be problematic. The design from the corners will require more work, but devoid of this drawback.

• After the beam is installed and fixed with a mortar, you can take a break in the repair work until the cement dries.
• After that, you can continue to knock out bricks using a punch and a chisel. Analysis of the masonry is carried out from top to bottom.

In no case should you smash the bricks with a sledgehammer from the bottom up, as this is fraught with serious injuries when the masonry collapses!

Doorway reinforcement

After the contour of the future door frame is knocked out, the edges of the hole should be aligned. Fallen halves of bricks should be inserted back and fixed with cement mortar. The structure is strengthened by horizontal uprights, for which it is better to use the corners superimposed on both sides of the wall and fastened together by horizontal strips welded in thickness the opening. Also, the corners are fixed with studs that pass through the through holes in the wall.