Providing Answers To Common Questions About Brick And Mortar Repairs
Brick is often chosen as a building material due to its extreme durability. Despite being an extremely strong and durable option, brick and mortar can still suffer some fairly significant problems that must be addressed when they arise. More specifically, failing mortar is one of the more commonly encountered issues that brick homes will need to address.
What Can Cause Your Home's Mortar To Fail?
As time passes, moisture will start to seep deep into the mortar. This moisture will gradually degrade the mortar. When the mortar starts to deteriorate, it will become extremely brittle. This will cause it to flake, chip, and crack. Unfortunately, failing mortar can quickly lead to the bricks starting to become loose or otherwise unstable. You can help to minimize the risk of the mortar suffering water damage by sealing it every few years, but this will only slow the problem rather than completely eliminating it.
How Is Failing Mortar Repaired?
It can be easy to think that the process of repairing failing mortar will be extremely complicated. However, this is a type of damage that may be easier to repair than you had anticipated. A tuckpointing professional will be able to remove the compromised mortar from between the bricks. Once this is done, the new mortar will be injected into the space where the old mortar was located. Depending on the amount of mortar that is needing to be replaced, this repair will take anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks to complete.
Will The Entire Exterior Needing Tuckpointing Services?
You might assume that the entire exterior will need to be tuckpointed to repair this damage. However, this is not the case as the contractor will only need to remove the mortar that has started to fail. Also, it is common for this type of damage to be fairly isolated as long as it is caught during the early stages of developing. By acting to having these repairs done promptly, you can minimize the scope of the damage along with the extent of the repairs that will be needed.
Repairing failing mortar is a project that owners of brick homes will eventually find that they need to do. Understanding the issues that cause mortar to fail, the steps for repairing this damage along with the fact that only the damaged portion of the exterior will require this work are essential to allowing you to make reasoned decisions when having your exterior repaired.
Contact a company like J. Forrest Development for more information and assistance.
