How to Repoint a Stone Foundation | This Old House

so what we need to do is we need to drag all this loose water out and create a void or a hole so then we can put new water in to tighten up the stone of the foundation and actually stop those cold drafts from coming in all right you're on this is a rocket science we're going to use whatever tool we can to get the mortar out from between the rocks we just don't want to take the rocks down now this can be dusty and to keep the dust down I like to take a spray bottle and spray the water and keep it down and then we'll just dig it out okay we're going to go in about two or three inches just like that take it all out create plenty of space for our new mortar I only get this old fiberglass insulation out of there so I'll wet that down and that will help keep the dust down - all right so what I want to do is I want to drag all this stuff out now that's our sill right there that's what's holding the house up so that stone stays that's really nice and firm but any just loose stuff we can remove it now down here at the bottom the wall is in really good shape the mortar is nice and tight up here it was bad it was loose we have removed all of our loose mortar now I just want to brush away all the loose debris and I think we're just about ready to go outside and mix up our new mortar all right what we using is a type s masonry mortar mix it's all pre-mixed and this can be used for a block foundation brick or even for pointing up a stone foundation like downstairs a little bit of water in now I want to put a little bit of bonding agent in about a half a gallon and this will make the mortar stick to the stone really well now we're going to mix it up and we have this top right here with four handles and we're going to mix it up with the top as opposed to using the shovel so have a corner and what we're going to do is we're actually going to just roll it back and forth a little bit here a little bit there that looks like good John now all we got to do is get it downstairs okay I'm going to do this hole right here it's about five inches deep and I want to make sure I get plenty of water in that hole so I'll just going to put it on the tip of my trial I'm going to throw it right in there pushing it right up against the stone so we get a nice tight bond there so once you grab that small stone right down there and what I want to do is I want to push it right into the wet and water just like that push it right in here that'll pack it in tight how long does this stuff take to set well it'll take an hour or so for it to start to set up so we get a ways to go all right so now we're gonna need a bigger Rock to get right in here John Bay right on top of that this came out of there all right see how it fits push it right into it yeah good all right if I want the water to flow nicely against the stone I missed it just a little bit and I brushed those joints nice and tight and I think this wall is good for another hundred years you

Channel: This Old House

Views: 476,622

Rating: 4.7784305 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Foundation, stone, Mortar, Repointing Do It Yourself, Tom Silva, foundation wall, repair, Update, episode part, TV show, Episode, tom silva this old house, tom silva house, tom silva construction, tom silva tools, tommy silva

Id: jgU245CbALc

Length: 3min 37sec (217 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 07 2014