Spalling bricks / re-pointing

[Anna Kettle]

Limewash it. You'd probably want to tint the limewash with some brick dust

Every time I use mine I curse its design. Yes it is great having widely separated feet and a tabletop to put things on but how about the four sets of nuts and washers and wingnuts which have to be fixed in position around ladder and standoff while the ladder is propped up and over something and the standoff is balanced on top of it cos if the ladder is laid flat you can't get at the nuts. After the job is over the standoff cum ladder contraption is too awkwardly bulky to store so it all has to be taken apart and the nuts and washers and wingnuts and standoff connected together again cos if I don't then they will have gone walkabout before I need to use the standoff again

Must have been designed by a man

Sits back and waits for outrage

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England |""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs / ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc |____|

01359 230642

[bigcat]

worthwhile?

Breaking the brick makes getting it out easier, if youre having difficulty. But drilling holes is rather a slow approach, small angle grinder miles easier.

Point with lime mortar rather than cement. And be very gentle indeed with neighbouring bricks, they break very easily. Breaking sets off spalling.

frost.

Have you tried it? I've only done that once, and so far so good. I realise its not the best option for long term life, but for a place out of view its a mighty quick and effective repair. It is necessary to brush off any loose brick, if you dont then its just waiting to blow.

Using lime should avoid it blowing long term.

This would trap water content, causing brick spalling. Not recommended. It also makes damp problems much worse. This is a very common mistake.

Then I'd be using lime mortar, 3:1. Cement on soft porous bricks can cause spalling.

In most cases sharp sand, builders sand, lime. Dont point in lime when frost is expected in the month or 2 ahead, it takes a long time to set.

Anna Kettle:

Just the one brick you mean? I really would not limewash the whole wall, it will make it look awful and add a regular maintenance job for no need.

No outrage here. Plenty of junk on the market.

NT

[nthng2snet]

from your pics i would .personally, think twice about cutting out and replacing the bricks that are close to the tiled roof ( third pic of original post). I would be afraid that they might disrupt the return on the render of the underside of the roof slate/ tiles and adjoining bricks as they are close to the end of the courses of brick..If it were me i would just reface these as they don't seem that bad. As they are high up I don't think anyone would notice any mis matching , although I think it would be important to keep the brick line. If it were me like i would make up the brick faces, let em go off a bit , cut too size- let em dry and then repoint as if they were the original bricks,. The refacing of the bricks would be done with cement dye to try and match colour, as with the pointing. I am not a professional so its just my opinon.

[nthng2snet]

from your pics i would .personally, think twice about cutting out and replacing the bricks that are close to the tiled roof ( third pic of original post). I would be afraid that they might disrupt the return on the render of the underside of the roof slate/ tiles and adjoining bricks as they are close to the end of the courses of brick..If it were me i would just reface these as they don't seem that bad. As they are high up I don't think anyone would notice any mis matching , although I think it would be important to keep the brick line. If it were me like i would make up the brick faces, let em go off a bit , cut too size- let em dry and then repoint as if they were the original bricks,. The refacing of the bricks would be done with cement dye to try and match colour, as with the pointing. I am not a professional so its just my opinon.

[Anna Kettle]

Yes, just where spalling has occurred, to provide a surface which water will tend to run off rather than into. If the spalling is in a shape which will make pools of water then go one step further and use lime mortar to assist water shedding.

This is instead of removing the bricks and is used by National Trust etc when spalling exists and needs to be slowed/halted but the spalling is not so bad that whole bricks or stones need to be cut out

It was first tried on Wells Cathedral 30 years ago and seems to be working well

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England |""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs / ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc |____|

01359 230642

[Rob Morley]

Not that I'm aware of short of laboratory analysis.

[Lobster]

That's interesting. As an aside, a few months back I was trying to make good some red-brick house walls (early 1900's) from which the subsequently-applied render had been removed leaving a grubby grey residue. I tried brick acid on it but that was a non-starter (5 minutes and a lot of elbow grease per brick for only a fair result) and wimped out of sand-blasting because an expert (now I think about it, it was you, Anna, who put me on to him!) reckoned it would wreck the bricks. So I just left it all alone and hope that the muck will weather away eventually. But I did wonder about trying to cover it up - would your brick-dust-treated limewash work? Never used limewash, how long would it stay on an external wall? Wouldn't it just wash off?

David

[Lobster]

I'm *totally* outraged...!

Sounds like you have a different model to mine - a black plastic affair (see link above)? (Mine, by extrapolation, must have been designed by a woman!). It only has two wingnuts to attach it and they really aren't at all fiddly - have to say when I first saw it, I thought it would never be safe and secure enough, but it is. Yours sounds more like my roof-ladder attachment, which I agree is a right palaver to rig up.

Thinking about it, I have to say one disadvantage of the standoff is that if you have a long ladder like mine it's damned awkward to stand it up; I find mine unweildy enough anyway, without the presence of a bulky extra weight right at the top!

David

[bigcat]

ty, nice tip for the archive there.

NT

[Anna Kettle]

That was rash of me. Generally when people mention sand blasting in my hearing it is cos they want to remove paint and varnish from old timbers. I throw my hands up in horror and say "Crunchie bar". In future I will throw my hands up in horror when they mention brick and sandblasting too

I suppose so, but then you would have a painted brick wall - or would you have the patience to paint each brick separately? Limewash normally needs to be redone perhaps every 5-10 years depending on exposure to the weather, though if you can colourmatch well to the bricks then I spex you could get away with relimewashing less frequently as you wouldn't need the perfect finish of a limewashed wall. If applied correctly then limewash doesn't wash off as a one way chemical reaction occurs as the lime sets.

As another possibility you could look up "tuck pointing" which is a tried and tested method of tarting up old brickwork. The one time I looked carefully at some tuck pointing I reckoned that close to it didn't look very nice but that could have just been a poor example. The general idea is to sharpen up the pointing with coloured lime mortar to give the bricks more definition

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England |""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs / ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc |____|

01359 230642

[Anna Kettle]

Just checked the URL and yes you do have a different one - yours wasn't available when I bought mine about a year ago. The one I bought is the "Ladder Stay" on the same page

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England |""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs / ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc |____|

01359 230642

[al]

Going slightly off the original topic ... but I want to paint the floor (concrete) and walls (bare brick one side, pebble-dash rendering on the other) of my garage this spring. The bare bricks and floor in particular I get the impression will just drink paint as I would imagine they're quite porous.

Would what you suggested above be the best primer to seal it before painting or is there something else better suited to the job?

a

[bigcat]

Garage floor paint. Actually the commercial concrete floor paints are much better.

NT

[al]

Do you need to prime that first or is it a single coat finish?

a

[Lobster]

Actually, I just spotted mine in the garage just now - my memory was failing me: mine attaches to the ladder by just a single knurled hand wheel; dead quick and easy. I was really surprised how rigidly it mounts TBH. I think you'd find it a real revelation after yours!

David

[Lobster]

shows my Screwfix one in action, in case you're interested!

David