mgbinspect

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I have actually installed many Colonial Replica shaped brick like that on college and government buildings, to match existing buildings. I suppose, in all honesty, there is no detail that you will see in these photos that I have not formed and installed during my masonry career. I actually used to lay out, cut by hand and install, without a table saw, jack arches. About the only thing I never got to do was erect an industrial smoke stack. I always wanted to, but they don't build many of those anymore. My brother, who passed away a couple years ago, had the pleasure in Baltimore, MD. The old fellow inside the church stated that this building was constructed in 1716. I did not know of the other previous buildings.

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Most of the historic homes in Williamsburg are residences, but the grand building like this one are open to the public - a part of the historic tour.

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Now that's funny... I know it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but here you have through-wall flashing below a missing head joint in the blockwork. BRILLIANT! On most government jobs, we were not only required to install brick with full head joints, but actually back-parge the brickwork. Then the block backup also had to have proper head joints. We'd pull up a little screed, which made sure the cavity remained clean as we went up. There are no masons anymore. They're all dead or retired.

IMHO, you've hit the nail on the head: 1. Poor installation practices. 2. Geography. Here, we don't get a lot of rain per year and it gets as hot as Hades (a little patch of Florida on the east coast). I gather Chicago gets a fair amount of wind driven rain (the windy city) and cool temps where masonry can remain perpetually damp and forever on the verge of full penetration? It seems be a real factor in some of the shocking damage Kurt's posted about brick parapets with membrane roofing up the back side and over the top of the parapet.

In the end, so much of what we decide to report is truly a judgment call. I know that here, in eighteen years now, no one has ever called to even ask about, let alone share some horror story as a result of no weep holes. Similarly, while some areas of the country experience big problems with Polybutylene plumping pipes, it's never been much of a problem here. I've only seen or even heard of a handful of failures in my entire career here. The only time is becomes a big issue is when someone moves here from another part of the country or a relo company gets involved. Then, suddently the stuff is getting torn out problem or not. Of course, in both cases I do inform my buyers that there could be a problem, but we need to decide, based upon real life experience and research if we're going to be reporters or chicken little declaring that the sky is falling. I guess that's a part of what makes us professionals - making those calls...

On a side note, for anyone that had never heard of, Scott "Spiderman" Mulholland, he's one of the pioneers of moisture intrusion and forensics - making the ridiculous fees to find the stuff no one else can find, related to high rise buildings. I think he was an Army Ranger? or Marine? but his expertise was repelling, which he puts to good use use finding and problems. He's been all over the country and was one of our instructors at the Exterior Design Institute - Third Party EIFS Inspection and Moisture Analysis Training. the institute has been around for years and was the big in helping develop a lot of the changes in the way EIFS is/was installed. If you have any interest in becoming a Third Pary EIFS Inspector, that's a good place to go. I got the certification and decided there was just too much liability (mostly based upon trying to probe fo the unknown, base upon moisture testing). And, I was busy enough already. It was a great course though. A lot gets thrown at you in a short period of time and the test is tough. You really have to know a lot about synthetic stucco installations. I always refer folks to one of my fellow classmates that became an EIFS inspector, when EIFS is on a building. I haven't actually seen him in years, but he's a character and a half. And, he could no doubt have retired many years ago at the fees he's been making for the last few years.

That and, on buildings with some height, a broken bond between brick and mortar in a bed joint. Water can literally get drawn in, via the stack affect, in alarming quantities. Where's Spiderman these days?... He was one of my instructors back at the Exterior Design Institute for the Moisture Analysis Training Class - crazy fellow, but he was decent at moisture intrusion.

Last Spring a fellow HI here in the area had a problem like that. He called me for advice. I told him, over the phone, it was a lousy brick veneer installation, just like I described above - skimpy head and bed joints. After the home owner spent a few bucks on an engineer, the HI called me back to inform me the engineer came back with the same conclusion. If you don't install brick veneer right, it's a gift that will keep on giving forever. Full head and bed joints are critical.

Yesiree, brother John. It's in the "Yeah, I saw it." category for me. I don't make a huge deal of it, but I mention it - especially when it was required and overlooked. Most houses around here before 1950 don't have them. After 1950 they were commonplace. With the influx of fereign (that's not a mis-spell, it's a joke) help, they've become less common - kinda like that upside down concrete lintel we all joked about in the Spring. A lot of the recent ills in masonry installations are more a communication problem than anything else. Trabajamos muy difícilmente y hacemos el mejor que podemos, pero sus maneras no son nuestras maneras.

That's always been my take on it too. It seems like every now and then someone will make a big deal about them at one of the HI Seminars, but I've never seen any major damage from the lack of them either. The only time I ever mention them missing is in newer construction, since they're now required. It's difficult to imagine very many scenarios where significant moisture is going to end up behind masonry unless you neglect sealants, flashing and the roof. As far as wind driven rain - Here's the bottom line: Water is not going through four inches of brick except under two conditions: 1. The brick were excessively porous, which was a problem in the 70's for a while. 2. If the mason didn't use full head and bed joints. (Now, that I've seen - especially when a mason just puts just a little dab of mortar on the front and back of the brick for a head joint - oh yeah - the system will leak badly. But if brick is properly installed, with full head and bed joints, water isn't going to make it through in significant quantities.) As a side note, concrete block (and espectially split-faced block) are considerably more porous, and water WILL soak through them, as Kurt has already documented. Splif-faced block don't have any form of finish on them so they're especially bad. When concrete block are made, the form is vibrated, just after the mix is poured in, to cause cement to press against the surface of the form. That is why the outer surface is slightly more dense than the balance of the block. The vibration does essentially the same thing that tooling ("striking") mortar joints does - seal the surface some to impede moisture intrusion. Split-faced block are literally that. A form is made up that makes one large unit that is split into two seperate units. The resulting face is actually raw inner material with no finish against the weather. They're a disaster, and they weren't any fun to install either. They're hard to handle, because they're not balanced. And, the faces are never parallel to the back face, so they really need to be dressed with a chisel like stone, but most masons never bothered. I did.

That's why I write it as I did. There's no point in sending folks off to someone else to tell them nothing can be done. Weeps without flashing are useless. Little more than an air vent, which through convection may offer a bit of drying.

I'd begin: "Weep holes, which in conjunction with properly installed flashing, permit moisture to drain out from behind the masonry, are not present. Adding weeps now, due to the lack of flashing, will not be effective. Maintain flashings and the roof to minimize the possibility of moisture behind the masonry."

Around here, squirrels will gnaw straight through trim, hardboard or cedar siding to make a home in an attic or eave. I don't know how they ever learned to do so, but they are extremely tenacious. And, once in very territorial - adverse possession. Click to Enlarge 28.4 KB Click to Enlarge 44.77 KB

There's no lintel above the garage door, and the arch wasn't severe enough to transfer the load. Well, more my question is: the brick isn't actually bearing any of the weight of the roof framing - only its own weight. Right? I can't think of too many times that brick veneer doubled as a structural support.

Surely the masonry isn't load bearing. Is it?

Headache!.... Thank heaven for wall ties?...

It's just a building with cement pasties on... We all learned about pasties way back when... Didn't we?... [:-tophat] (I always liked keeping my money in my pocket back then. It just didn't compute.) I loved installing field and quarry stone veneer, and toward the very end of my masonry career, it's what I did the most of. But, it was very difficult to get used to the fact that, while one could install approximately thirteen vertical feet of brickwork in a day, one was lucky to install three to four vertical feet of stone. It required patience, but it was always especially rewarding to step back at the end of the day and enjoy your artwork. Back then, (in the early 80's) no one knew of drain planes, etc. The standard way to install field stone was directly against the wall sheathing, which was covered with a vapor retarder and fifteen or thirty pound felt. (I always chose thirty. Fifteen pound felt always seemed so fragile.) The work was achored with heavy guage wall ties and the cement/sand mix packed and chinked solidly right back to the sheathing - no voids. (While we always put weeps in brickwork because of the cavity behind, but with no cavity behind stonework, it didn't make sense. Moisture intrusion through six inches of solid stonework just didn't seem likely.) We'd slick and brush the outside surface of the joints to create a weather seal. It seemed to work well.

Great resource Tom. Thanks a TON! Just added it to my PDF library.

No it's not......[:-apple] Ok, you made me bust out laughing that time...[:-hspin]

Exactly. Mine is fourteen years old, and while I've added content at times, I really haven't changed pages much, and it's right up there. Has been for a long time - maybe not on the the first page, but easy enough to find. I do hook up with anything that google, yahoo, msn, etc allow me to for free, along with local stuff like Merchantcircle, but that's about it.