Repointing That Matches the Brick You Already Have

Mortar is designed to fail before the brick does. It is the soft part of the wall, and it is supposed to be, because a joint that gives is a joint that takes the movement instead of cracking the brick face. Here that clock runs fast. Water gets into an open joint in November, freezes, expands, and pushes the face of the mortar out a little further each cycle. By the third or fourth winter the joint is raked back on its own, the wall is drinking water, and the brick faces above the failed line start popping off in sheets. That last part is the expensive one, because spalled brick has to be cut out and replaced, and matching a hundred year old brick is a different job from repacking a joint.

The other half of the problem is what somebody smeared over it last time. Modern portland cement mortar is harder than the brick in most older buildings in this valley, so when the wall moves the brick loses. You end up with a facade that was repointed ten years ago and is now shedding faces around perfectly intact joints. Reading that before quoting is the whole job. We look at what the brick is, what the existing mortar is, how deep the joints have actually failed, and whether the trouble is the wall or the gutter dumping onto it. Then you get a number and a written scope, not a guess from the sidewalk.

What the visit covers

• Read the wall first: brick type, existing mortar and the real failure depth
• Cut joints back to sound mortar, generally two to two and a half times the width
• Grind and chisel without cutting into the brick arris or widening the joint
• Match the mortar for color, texture and hardness to the brick, not to convenience
• Repack in lifts and tool the joint profile to match the original wall
• Cut out and replace spalled or split brick where the face is already gone
• Rebuild failed sills, water tables and the courses under them
• Point around windows and doors where the sealant has pulled away
• Wash the wall down and clear the mortar out of the joint face
• Flag the gutter, downspout or grade that is soaking the wall in the first place

Why the calendar decides the start date

Fresh mortar has to hydrate before it can survive a freeze, and mortar that freezes green never gets its strength back. In warm months that happens on its own and the job is straightforward. In the cold it has to be engineered: warmed sand and water, a mix built for low temperature cure, a heated enclosure over the working face, and insulated blankets left on the fresh joints long enough for them to gain strength before the first hard night. That is how winter repointing is done properly, and it is what separates a wall that holds from one crumbling under a thumbnail by spring. It costs more than the same wall in June, so we put the winter number and the spring number side by side and you choose.

Scope is written before anybody sets up staging. Square footage or linear footage of joint, how many brick have to come out and be replaced, what happens at the sills, and what we are not touching. If the wall opens up and there is more failure behind it than the surface showed, you hear about it that day with a price for the change, and you decide before we keep going. Because painting runs out of the same company, a facade that needs pointing and then trim work gets sequenced properly instead of one crew painting over what the other one is about to open up.