Something For The Masonry Department

dakzaag

Well, this section of CT has been slow, so I will post another question. I am looking at a repair job that I am not sure what to recommend other than tear it out and redo.

I the following pic, the concrete floor has been broken out and repoured about 5 years ago. the walls are 35 years old. The brick in the walls have spawled and busted up over time.

What is the best solution to brick that are falling apart right at the junction of the concrete. This is the only pic I have of the junction and it doesn't show any bad brick, but there are a lot of them.

At the same time the floor was replaced a mason tried to fix some of the brick. Didn't turn out so well.


The HO said the masons started to cut out the brick and complained the mortar was too hard and then made a slurry of mortar, brick dust and sand, parged it over the crumbling brick and then tooled in a joint line to make it look like this. Not suprisingly the HO wants it too look better.

Best option is to tear out whole wall, but that involves over 3000 brick and about the same amount of labor as fixing the uglyness by cutting out the brick and replacing. (only about 750 brick acutally need replaced.)

Of course, the brick are standard 8" brick and nothing on the market is 8" so I am thinking if he wants a repair to put a soldier course in to accomodate the shorter brick. Basically removing 6 courses of ugly brick and replace with three running bond courses and 1 standing soldier course.

The mortar is very hard, but diamond blade makes short work of it. It is white mortar and silica sand. This seems like the best fix where there isn't a concrete floor, but how do I repair the brick that are half covered with concrete?

Here is a better pic of the problem with the floor.


The second course up that needs replaced is no big deal and in this picture the first course should come out ok. In a lot of places the conrete covers half the brick like in the first picture.

I can think of several ideas to hide the bad brick. A plastic base board or a concrete curb placed in front of the bad brick. Any one else have better ideas?

I am stopping by a brick manufacturer tomorrow to see if he can make me these brick in standard 8" size. He was very pleasant to talk to on the phone and said that even though we only need about 2500 brick, he is definately interested in running a small batch since they are very slow right now. I am curious what it will cost to have them custom made and if they can replicate the color. From the road it looks pink, but as you can see, up close it is orange clay and white powder on the surface.

Here is the front porch that needs ripped out and replaced.


Open for suggestions

__________________
D K & Sons
The maintenance schedule for brick
1. Stand back and say "man that looks nice!"
2. Repeat as often as needed.

CR2

If they want to pay to get it done right, push for the tear out/redo, if they don't want to expend that much, then you can stitch the cracks, parge the walls and cultured brick everything(you'll save the tear out pain in the b....) and if they still don't want to pay for that, let it be and they can live with it; you can't do chicken soup with chicken sh..
Good Luck!

DJ9222

Take the whole thing apart and start over , if you see where the concrete slab meets the wall there appears to be no expansion joint
the pressure of the concrete moving is causing the damage to the wall, any repair will only be a patch and will fail again.