Hi I have a concrete block wall (with an imitation stone face on one side) on the boundary with my neighbour. I want to add another two courses of blocks to the top. The means removing the capping stones and all the old mortar.
Whats the best way to remove the old mortar? Cold chisel and lump hammer, bolster and lump hammer or angle grinder (trouble with the angle grinder is the amount of dust it sprays over to my neighbours side of the wall)
Many thanks Roger
I would use an SDS drill - with rotation lock - with a chisel bit. [Same as a hammer and cold chisel really - but let the machine do the work!]
But that would prevent him finding a decent occupation for his screwdrivers.
Seriously, they should tap off easily enough. A hammer and boulster will do the job quickly enough unless you are a complete wussemarrer.
Of course if you do just happen to have a state of the art in the tool shed there is no point in hiding it from the light of is there?
The capping is often mortared on with glue added to the mortar, which is normally easy to tell -- have any pieces come loose yet? If the capping is still all firmly in place, it likely has glue in the mortar, I would strongly recommend an SDS drill and chisel bit.
I also find that in some situations, the rapid, yet comparatively gentle, action of an SDS hammer will reduce the chance of cracking blockwork elsewhere in an old wall when compared to a hammer and bolster.
Alex
I'm interested in this as will be doing same job this summer, but help me on this: what's an SDS drill? what's rotation lock? what's a chisel bit?
Sorry if this sounds idiotic... I have a hammer action dril & various wood/metal/masonry drillbits, but guess that's not what is meant here?
The front face of my house has really thin mortar joints & what I've done so far is used a small 1/4 inch cold chisel & hammer to gently chop out old mortar - tried drill & smallest masonry bir, but hard to control & messed up edges of the bricks.
Help/clarification appreciated.
"gently" isn't a word which sits easily in the same sentence as "SDS drill" ...
Having seen the speed and efficiency of an SDS drill at shifting plaster, mortar, brickwork, stonework and the rest I'd prefer to use a bolster and hammer for something which demands finesse!
Incidentally, Spouse's SDS came asunder recently. A gear wheel inside broke and the lot exploded. It could have been damaging to the user, luckily it wasn't but it's made me nervous. HB said it was out of guarantee (a couple of weeks of course) so they had no responsibility. It's his birthday on Monday so it's a problem solved for a son but it won't be a HB model!
Mary
An SDS drill is similar to a hammer drill in that it can rotate a drill bit and hammer at the same time, but there the similarity ends. [I'm not sure what "SDS" stands for - I think it's something in German, invented by Bosch - but I have heard variations on this!] The hammering is *far* more effective - more like a pneumatic drill, with a little pneumatic piston inside. An SDS drill doesn't have a conventional chuck - but rather a quick release device which grips a sort of spline on the end of the bits - hence you need special bits designed for SDS.
A decent SDS drill (they don't all do it - so choose carefully) lets you:
This last feature is what I was talking about. You can get chisel bits which look rather like cold chisels at the business end but which have an SDS (or rather SDS+) shank at the other end, to fit into an SDS drill. A typical example is Screwfix D15618, seen here (if the link wraps ok!):
he mean stab de sucker, mon.
An sds works on an different method of impacting the drill bit to the cam or ratchet that a conventional drill hammer uses.
The whole shebang is too much for the OP's needs. If the wall was built in the rain it will be harder to dismantle then if the the bricks/blocks were too dry when laid.
Even so, the thing will knock apart in a few hours with an hammer and chisel.
Well, SS, that's perfectly clear & very helpful - thanks; checked the link too. Bearing in mind what I've read, & what Ms Fisher says before you, I think I'll play safe & stick with tap-tap-tapping on 1/4 inch cold chisel for sake of my old bricks, even if it takes the rest of the year! Thanks again for your patience. DB
OY!
I'm a respectable married woman with the photographs and wrinkles to prove it!
There really is something satisfying about the tap-tap-tapping. But some men seem to like taking the butch stance and seeing instant results! I've seen our baby son do that, it amuses me although I do understand that sometimes time is of the essence.
Mary Mrs Fisher :-)
David Byers wrote
David, there is a special type of chisel for cutting out brickwork joints. It's called a plugging chisel and is only about 3 or 4mm thick but flat the other way. You'll find it a lot easier. There's a picture here:
Good luck Peter
Thanks everyone, very helpful
Roger
Thanks for that, Peter. I have seen these plugging chisels before, but none as thin as you suggest, hence my 'special order' of a handful (I've worn out
2 already!) of these dinky little cold chisels from my local hardware store. I'll have to try & find a plugging chisel that thin for the narrow pointing I have. Many thanks.
What sort of glue does one use?
MBQ
PVA. You don't need much to make the mortar into a good glue -- I think I use about 1 table spoon per two shovels of sand (don't lick the spoon clean afterwards;-). It's easiest to mix into the water before you add it to the sand/cement (mix it with only a very small amount of water initially, then add more when mixed). There's a waterproof version which might be better for this case; I've used it for outdoor use, but I don't know if it really makes any difference.
(Actually I've never understood just what is waterproof about it; not softening when wet or not allowing transmission of water? I suspect the former. All it says about it is it's only suitable for outdoor use and waterproof when mixed into mortar.)
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