Argh, just what we needed right now, crumbling mortar!

Along the back wall of our house, which is the wall that experiences the most weather and rain, we have found an increasing amount of holes in the mortar between the bricks. The holes start small and slowly increase over time as the weather and rain hit it.

At some points I can very easily stick a knife straight through the mortar, and I have even done the same thing with a plastic pen at some of the mortar joints between bricks!

We had a brickie come out last week to look at it for us and what he reckons has happened is that when the wall was originally built, many of the cracks between bricks was just given what amounts to a surface scrape of old mortar. This can happen if the mortar stuck down between the bricks isn’t enough, or gets washed out. After the mortar has dried the gaps are seen, so the brick layers tries to squeeze in mortar between the bricks. This mortar is often old and left over stuff, so it doesn’t adhere well, and doesn’t dry very solid.

This problem with soft, crumbling mortar seems to be what we are experiencing now!

Over the next few weeks the brickie will be coming around and needing to cut and scrape out the old mortar. Then he will need to mix up some new mortar, try to match it to the colour of the existing mortar, and attempt to fill the gaps between the bricks.

Getting the gaps between the bricks repointed should be sufficient to stop any further dissolving of the existing mortal, and hopefully we can then look at fixing up the problems that the holes have caused inside the house …