Ask This Old House - Tuckpointing a brick foundation

welcome to st. Louis Gateway to the West home of Busch Stadium the Cardinals and the arch we're about ten miles from downtown st. Louis and this is our subject house a charming little Dutch colonial with a gambrel roof and here's a nice touch I love these Dharma's with these angled cheek walls those little windows up there really add a nice little detail hi I'm Tom Silva from ask this old house hi I'm Mike banker and this is my wife Trisha so how long you lived here we've been here for two years two years I was looking at those dorms and I really liked those angled walls but they also notice that you have a new roof up there yeah the first thing we did when we bought the house is put a new roof on and new gutters well that was smart in both a new roof to keep the house dry and new gutters and downspouts to keep the water away from the foundation we've done some other things since we've been here though really oh yeah are we going out here for well to show you one of our other big projects oh the street yes beautifying the street yes no actually we had our clay pipe in our front yard our sewer line it collapsed last fall oh yeah we had raw sewage backing in our in our basement so it was pretty disgusting yeah that's so nasty yeah and it was so expensive because by the time the job was done it was about $8,000 well I hope you've got that all corrected it better be now you wrote us about your foundation well yeah let me show you over here on the side of the house as you can see it is a brick foundation yeah yeah we've had problems with the mortar coming loose it's it's just been falling out plus we have some loose bricks oh yeah okay well I guess the first thing I want to know is do you get water in the basement we do get some water in the basement yes okay well let me explain first of all when you're repairing a joint between brick or block and you're repairing that mortar that's called pointing it actually looks like someone has done some repair work here now the first thing I would want to do is I want to inspect the rest of the foundation so I'm gonna take a look around okay and if we can confine the work to this area right here if you want to remove this downspout I'll get some tools and we get started sounds good thanks Tom well the good news is is the foundation and the rest of the house looks pretty good and I'm also glad that you put new gutters and downspouts on because what I think might have happened the old gutters and downspouts might not have been working the water really collects up here in this part of the roof and I think it might have splashed down on the driveway splashing up against your foundation washing out these joints but there's another problem I think that someone had repointed this building and they used a mortar that is too hard wouldn't you want to have a hardened order you'd think that but you don't want a mortar that is harder than the brick the brick is going to expand and contract it's gonna move with the weather conditions and you want something that will give thus a mortar that is softer than the brick all right now let's get our safety glasses on I brought some tools and I brought in what is called a raking bar and what we want to do now is we want to rake out the mortar in these joints now it's important that we don't go too deep we have a half-inch joint I don't want to go any deeper than an inch these are the bed joints right here all right you break them out all right you want to grab that raking bar right there that raking this out don't want to go too far we want to go about an inch deep and we want to keep it as even as we can depth wise well you only want to go in about an inch but the bar has a tapered end on it and in most of the joints that taper will stop you at about a one-inch okay take your time so little by little it's not a rush all right it's looking good now the joints that you guys are working on are called bed joints those are the horizontal rows the joints at the end of the bricks are called head joints now we're going to clean those out with a different tool we're actually going to use a chisel and a hammer now you're gonna take the chisel and you're gonna bang that corner make sure the chisel doesn't hit this brick all right and you're gonna take it hold it nice and firm like that and look at where you're hitting don't look at the chisel because if you look at the chisel you're missing each end and that's that will hurt okay okay don't leave me I'm right yeah okay look the way you're hitting tap it tap it I'm going with the chisel now tap it again move the chisel move the chisel out of the way yeah now let's see how it's cleaned out huh take the chisel rake it out with the chisel yeah I think now take your chisel and just go up and down straight like that okay then you're in about an inch okay there you go yeah I think you've got it looking good tres you're making great headway well now we're ready for the mortar and whenever dealing with brick mortar the ingredients are always the same sand hydrated lime and Portland cement what does change is the proportions to match your original mortar we're going to choose six parts and one part hydrated lime in one part of Portland cement we also want to make sure that we match the granule of the sand so we're gonna choose a medium grain sand now when you put these ingredients together this is called a type and mortar type and mortar type and okay so we're gonna mix all this up we actually don't have to they actually can buy that in a bag all mixed and all we have to do is add water all right now we're ready to add the water so break open the bag with the hoe now the amount of water that's gonna be needed for each bag is about one to one and a half gallons of water so you could start mixing as I add pull up pull water right into that's right pull it right around that's right how's this it's good just pull wet into the dry keep mixing I'm gonna add a little more water for you what I like to do is add a little bit of water at a time so that you don't make the mix soupy what happens when it's too soupy it'll run all over the place let's see how it feels Mike we got a good mix here making sure we don't have any dry spots or any dry lumps I'm gonna make it nice and creamy okay I think we're just gonna let this slake I'll cure for about 15 minutes we're ready to go okay while we're waiting for our mortar mix to set up let's look at the condition of a brick now right here in the lower corner see this brick right here is actually cracked and broken this needs to be replaced now I follow this brick right here and I look across the front I can see this is a big crack and a piece missing this also needs to be replaced let's start by removing this brick okay I'm gonna grab that one out with a hammer but I want to be careful not to disturb the surrounding brick clean that all out I want to make sure we remove all of the Moose water back here because I want to make sure I have plenty of room the new brick to fit well it's good you had some old brick laying around those are gonna come in handy I want to spray the brick down just a little bit so it won't be dry because a dry brick will suck the water out of our new mortar causing it to crack rather than work from the wheelbarrow or a bucket I find it easy to use this little piece of plywood and load my mortar right on it this is called a mortar boy a couple scoops on okay now we're ready to lay some brick okay now I want to take and lay a nice little bed joint right down in here I want to lay it a little bit thick because I want to keep the brick up now I want to put a little bit on the head joint and I'll put some on the top of the brick and I try to push this brick into position working it back and forth so it goes down and in okay all right now I want to tap this brick down so the top of this brick is flush with the existing brick that looks pretty good now I want to fill in behind the brick fill up that void okay now I want to lay into the bed joint right here in the front now I'm going to take another brick and I do the head in a bed now I want to try to work it in okay now I want to push the brick in so that this face is flush with this space pay attention to the level that looks pretty good okay we're ready for the last brick you want to set it sounds good absolutely all right so the first thing you want to do is take your trowel and lay a good bed right on top right inside the wall there slap it right in there there you go and I'll work it down push it right on to the brick to keep it thick and you got to work it up onto the head joint of each brick both on this one and on this one that's right push it right against the brick hard right now flatten out the bed joint keep it nice and thick now try to get some on that head joint around the corner push it right hard push it right against the brick hard yeah yeah push it in nice there you go all right now you're gonna grab that brick and you're gonna put a nice coat of bed joint right on the top push it right down push it right on it now let's braid or spread it around nice and thin there you go okay okay that's good what I want you to do now is take the brick and work it into position back and forth push it right in there that's right keep going now when you've come to a point we can't go any further take the mallet and tap it gently work it tap it ain't going okay now come around the end here and just tap it back just a hair oh that's good all right now take your trowel and work off all the excess hey Tom this mortar is getting pretty stiff well that's actually good because I want the mortar stiffer when we are pointing up the wall than when we were laying brick so I'm gonna lay some water on my hock I'm gonna take it over to the wall and now I'm gonna pack the joint using this narrow knife jointer pack it right in there now we're ready to start pointing the wall I have here some hand forged jointer tools his different profile this is a V groove and these are concave the concave is a recommended profile for exterior use because it sheds the water nice once you put some water on your hawk and we'll get you over to the wall all right now the first thing I want to do is I want to put some mortar on my pointer and I want to push it into the joint packing that in nice and tight put it right at the point of the jointer like that see I'm on the front end of it okay push it right into that joint nice and hard notice how they really pack it in there you don't want any air or space behind it okay go ahead I gotta say that looks great you guys are about ready to become Masons thanks like but it is a lot harder than it looks well there's a couple things left to do we have to scrape off this excess with a trowel all right then in about 20 minutes once it's set up I want you to take the brush and I want you to brush the wall diagonally don't go with the joints because you'll mess them up okay sounds good thank you so much for coming all the way out here to help us oh it's fine thank you so much pretty good Tom are you gonna hug out of it I did yeah now in that piece you talked about type in mortar I didn't even know there was a rating system well there are different types of mortar and you want to make sure that you match up the type of mortar with the type of wall that you're working and it's important how you finish those joints right I use the pointing tool that gave me a nice concave joint which really sheds the water nicely and a clean neat looking job yep all right thanks guys and be sure to keep your letters and your emails coming because we would love to hear from you so until next time I'm Kevin O'Connor I'm Richard there with I'm Roger cook and I'm Tom Silva for ask this old house hey guys Oh am I gonna do with this build the house

Channel: cwinter84

Views: 197,541

Rating: 4.6833177 out of 5

Keywords: tuckpointing, repointing, brick foundation, cracks in brick

Id: pNalgozfmTs

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 18 2014