Brick Repair Project at Wedgewood Village Apartment Buildings
If you have ever had to replace spalled brick in your masonry walls, then you know how time consuming, intrusive, noisy, dirty, and expensive it can be. When faced with a budget shortfall, a fast track or timely repair, and/or only needing a short-term solution, there is another faster, much less messy, noisy, and cheaper way. That is to simply apply a vertical masonry patch and stain it to match the existing, surrounding brick in the walls. Utmost Renovations was recently invited to bid and, subsequently, hired to get fifty nine (59) apartment buildings with over fifty thousand (50,000) spalled brick repaired in a timely manner for a HUD re-act inspection for the owner and manager at Wedgewood Village on the west side of Columbus.
Masonry walls on exteriors of homes and buildings are subject to spalling which is the process where masonry of any type chips, crumbles, fragments, or flakes from a larger piece of masonry such as brick unit in a brick wall. Spalling is usually caused from water intrusion into the masonry wall, wythe, or cavity over time and during freeze-thaw cycles the masonry units crack from the inside out just below the surface of the outer face of the masonry unit “popping” the face of the masonry off or “spalling”.
The first line of defense in any exterior masonry wall to avoid spalling is to make certain the masonry units are sound and not already failed, cracked, or spalled. The second is to ensure the mortar joints are not open, missing, loose, cracked, crumbling, recessed to deep, or severely deteriorated. These deficiencies allow water to intrude into the masonry wall and water is purely evil in terms of its harm to masonry walls. If the masonry is still porous and taking in too much water, the next thing that can be done is to apply a masonry sealer or water repellent (the masonry will need cleaned first to remove all dirt, pollutants, etc. for the sealer to adhere and cure out to function as it is designed). Other factors that adversely affect a masonry wall are improper roofing systems that fail to shed water off the roof and onto the walls, inadequate gutters and downspouts causing leaks into walls and having any windows, doors, mechanical penetrations, and steel lintels not sealed properly.
In the case of the apartment buildings at Wegdewood Village, the buildings needed a quick face-lift as tens of thousands of brick were spalled but there was not ample time nor money to remove and replace all the masonry units. It usually costs 3-4 times more to replace a brick than to patch a brick due to much more labor costs and some more material costs. Though replacing masonry units is the most effective means of dealing and the best long-term repair option with unsound or spalled brick, it was not practical in this scenario. Time was of the essence. The brick walls had scattered failed or spalled brick throughout them caused from mostly poor inadequate drainage from old roofs, gutters and downspouts. The management team was instructed by Utmost to repair these items first and they did so quickly.
These are older buildings so, naturally, normal wear and tear from water and freeze-thaw cycles took its toll on the exterior masonry. The good news was that most of the windows were sealed well and most of the mortar joints were in good condition and not in need of repairs called “tuck-pointing”. Tuckpointing is the process where the mortar in between the brick units is removed to a minimum depth of 1/2” or deeper (preferably, 3/4”), the joint is cleaned and made dust-free, the joint is made slightly wet to improve adhesion/bonding of new mortar that is placed or packed into the joint with a small thin tuckpointing trowel or tool, mortar struck and finished to match existing mortar joints as close as possible using the same type of mortar (s, o, m, n, historical, lime putty, et. al.) that is originally in the wall.
Thus, with little tuckpointing or caulking required and the drainage issues resolved, the main scope of work consisted of lightly pressure-washing the areas on the walls where the spalled brick were located, allowing it to dry, probing, scraping and some removal of any remaining loose, unsound, spalled brick, dusting the affected surface, and applying a thin layer of masonry and/or concrete patch designed for vertical wall repairs via a trowel and smoothing it out to make it appear exactly like the original finish and texture of the existing brick. Once the patch set up and cured out, the mortar joints were cleaned off of any excess patch material and a masonry stain was painted on the exterior of the new patched brick making it look exactly like the original brick to anyone examining the walls.
The owner and management at Wedgewood Village knew from previous experiences working with Utmost Renovations, that Utmost was only one of a few viable options in the Columbus Ohio area to tackle this large fast-track project in a short time frame and obtain the desired results needed for the buildings’ masonry walls. These were as follows: 1) pass the HUD re-act inspection; 2) be certain the brick is water-tight; and 3) making the patched and stained brick look original and ensure it remains so for several years with any measure of confidence. In fact, Utmost completed the project in under three months ahead of the deadline by nearly a month, without incident, and the owner and manager were extremely pleased. To date, after nearly a year, there is still no reported failure of any of the new patches Utmost applied on any of the buildings. Needless to say, the HUD re-act passed with flying colors!
We hope this project overview is helpful and feel free to call on us for any assistance with this type of maintenance and repairs of your masonry walls (brick, block, stone, terra-cotta, stucco, EIFS, etc.). We will be glad to help you with any project of this nature.
Mark Huffer is the founder and president of Utmost Renovations–a premier masonry restoration and building renovation contractor and consultant. He is very well known and respected in the building restoration industry in Central Ohio with over twenty years of knowledge and expertise with a strong track record.
Please visit his company’s website at www.utmostrenovations.com for further information or to contact him.
