Brick, Mortar and Pointing

[Phöènix]

Paying some attention to the externals this month has raised some questions.

1. What's best to use to clean creamy coloured bricks. Maybe just washing up liquid but as they are 20 feet up I thought I may ask before getting out the ladders. Have you used a labour saving cleaner that has restored these easily.

1. Mortar Colour. I want to match some repairs to the current sandy coloured mortar. Got any tips or a page that may help me doing this.

2. I have some larger areas that will need complete repointing. Approx 50m2. What's a reasonable per sq.m charge for this in the south east, inc vat. (obviously excluding extra costs such as scaffolding).

Thanks for any help with these.

[The Natural Philosopher]

pressure washer.

Use a mixture of white cement and yellow sand. You may add hydarted linme as well for s more flexible mix.

[Michael Mcneil]

Since most mortar is sandy coloured, what makes you think that yellow sand is the answer?

[Anna Kettle]

Make sure that the mortar is weaker than the bricks, because if there is any movement then you want the mortar to crack not the bricks.

The thing that makes mortar grey is generally cement and you say your mortar is sandy coloured so I would suspect that it is not cement mortar (It could possibly be white cement tho) and instead is lime mortar. Lime is a brilliant white colour so in lime mortar the colour of the sand is what controls the final colour of the mortar.

Lime is also weaker than cement which is a GOOD THING especially if the bricks are the old soft type, but not so important with your modern hard brick

Once you've decided if you have lime mortar or white cement mortar then experiment with a couple of local sands to find a good colour match

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England |""""| ~ Plaster conservation and lime plaster repair / ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc |____|

01359 230642