The bricks above my 2 car garage door have lowered & are bowing. What would cause that?
Answer
That’s almost always a lintel issue. There’s a steel angle iron above your garage door that’s supposed to hold all that brick up, and over time it can rust, weaken, or start to sag. When that happens, the weight of the brick above has nowhere solid to sit, so it starts to drop and bow outward. In Michigan, water gets in, freezes, expands, and speeds that rusting process up fast. Sometimes it’s not even heavy rust—it could just be that the original lintel was undersized or not installed properly to begin with. Once it starts moving, the brickwork follows it, which is why you’re seeing that curve. When that lintel fully gives gravity will bring all of the bowing bricks down.
Not to make it sound like “the sky is falling” but what you have going on is pretty dangerous, especially if something or someone is underneath when that lintel finally snaps.
