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Shoutout to the inspector in Phoenix who showed me the stat on decaying mortar joints
He said something like 70 percent of failed brick walls he sees come down to bad flashing and water getting in behind the veneer, not the brick itself, and that number has been stuck in my head since he said it last Tuesday, so what's the one thing you check first on an old wall?
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nathan54512d ago
That stat matches what my mason told me last year when he repointed a section of my 1920s house. Water was getting behind the brick from a bad chimney flashing and the mortar on that whole side was soft and crumbling, but the brick itself was fine once we got it dried out. Pulled out about 20 bricks that were spalled and had to match them from a salvage yard, which was a pain. Now the first thing I do on any old wall is look at the top and the flashing, then poke the mortar with a screwdriver to see if it crumbles.
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