Lintels & Thermal Insulation

Fully Insulated Cavity Lintels

All our cavity lintels are fully insulated as standard. Our standard cavity lintels use CFC-free polystyrene (EPS) sections that exactly match the cavity of the lintel, and are cut to length to suit each lintel. This eliminates any air movement within the lintel, prevent heat transfer across the cavity by radiation or convection. When we manufacture special lintels for which we don’t have a suitable EPS insulation available, we use Mineral Wool thermal insulation. This insulation is soft and compressible, ensuring we have filled all cavity areas
inside the lintel to eliminate air-movement.

Stainless Steel is the best Insulator!

That’s right, stainless steels have far lower thermal conductivity than carbon steels. That’s why copper inserts are required in the base of good stainless steel saucepans - so they heat the food more effectively

Our High Strength Stainless Steel LDX 2101 has less than 1/4 the thermal conductivity of carbon steel (and zinc coated steel transfers heat even better).

Consequently where thermal insulation is a priority we advise people to use stainless steel.

Click here to visit the thermal information page on our
High Strength Stainless site

Thermal breaks

Some manufacturers produce standard lintels with a plate underneath that only has intermittent contact with the outer leaf. Our standard duty cavity lintels have a light gauge plate on the base with large perforations to provide a key for plaster lining or similar.

Although our base plate has a solid contact with the outer leaf of the lintel, in our case the perforations in the plate do the same job as the intermittent contact employed by other manufacturers. In fact, our ‘plaster-key’ is usually thinner than the plate used by other manufacturers, providing less opportunity for
thermal transfer.

For heavy duty lintels, all manufacturers (including us) use a solid full-strength base plate to achieve the necessary load capacity. In this case a thermal bridge across the base is unavoidable.

Additional insulation can be employed to cover the soffit of these lintels in the site construction to minimise thermal transfer, and insulation can also be added behind the internal lining on the inside.