Spalling brick repair for chimneys in University

How salts inside brick push the face off

Water moving through masonry carries dissolved salts. When that water evaporates at the surface, the salts are left behind as efflorescence. If the water dries out a little way beneath the face instead, the salts form crystals within the brick itself.

The Brick Industry Association explains that salts crystallizing within masonry can develop pressures that may result in spalling. That is one reason spalling tends to follow water entry, and why slowing the water down matters as much as replacing the bricks.

Our team looks for signs of salt movement, such as persistent white deposits, when we assess the damaged area.

Removing a failed brick without damaging its neighbors

The bricks around a damaged unit are worth keeping, so removal has to protect them. The Brick Industry Association describes breaking the damaged brick to make removal easier, then carefully cutting and chiseling out the surrounding mortar without harming the adjacent units.

Forcing a whole brick out, or cutting carelessly, can crack the bricks next to it and turn one replacement into several. We work slowly at the edges of each opening for that reason.

If a neighboring brick turns out to be loose or cracked once the damaged one is out, we show you before adding it to the repair.

Preparing the opening for a new brick

Once the old brick and its mortar are out, the opening has to be cleaned of dust and loose material so the new mortar can bond. Where the brick belongs to an outer wythe with a cavity behind it, BIA warns against letting debris drop into that cavity, because it blocks the drainage.

Chimneys are built in different ways, and some brick is a facing over another structure. We identify how your chimney is built before opening it up, so the repair suits its construction.

A clean, sound opening is what lets the new brick become part of the chimney instead of a plug sitting in a hole.

White bloom on newly repaired brick

Fresh masonry can show a light white bloom in the first months after a repair. The Brick Industry Association calls this new building bloom and notes that it generally fades as the new work dries and weathers.

Efflorescence that appears more than a year after work is finished is a different signal, which BIA links to excessive water penetration or poor drainage. If white deposits come back strongly after the first year, call us for another look.