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I am finding this out both in looking at homes and in getting my brick front home ready for sale.
MORTAR - after a few years you have a constant low level maintenance issue. IMO, it is probably almost as much work to maintain brick as a painted house [I have had those] and definitely more than one with vinyl siding.
Can't beat it for looks and durability but that darned mortar.
And hardly anyone where we are looking actually installs it properly [with flashing and weep holes, and proper airspace, and ties]
So, we will wind up buying but I don't think it will be our last home. Think we want to build ICF and figure out a better system for the outside skin.
I have been advised to "seal" the bricks with a breathable sealer to waterproof them and we are seriously considering that - it is about an every 5 year project
On my 13 year old home [unsealed] I have had some problems with openings/water penetration in the mortar basically around the corners of the bricks and some flaking of the bricks themselves. This wall faces West so it gets the brutal afternoon sun.
We are going to have to go back and patch a number of places. - these are small holes [too small to fit a pencil in] but can let in water during a hard rain. It is against a door where there is no weep hole [there are weep holes but not on that small section of wall]
Maybe I was naive, I thought all you had to do with brick is keep it clean.
Hmmm. I know that mortar has to be mixed properly. If it isn't, it tends to degrade. I've seen relatively new mortar that crumbled/dissolved (age newer than 14 years). But I haven't heard of sealing the exterior of brick houses if everything is done right.
But I love your idea of an ICF house! My husband and I want to build an ICF house sometime in the future, with a mixture of brick and cement fiber siding.
I really think the problems are that masonry is an art and in newer homes a lot of untrained labor is doing the job. That said we lived in an early 1900s home that had too much sand in the mortar [real brick foundation] and the entire foundation had to be redone because the mortar was very loose. I imagine it was not the original mortar because the original construction was very solid. [The studs were oak, not pine]
Here is an article on mortar and spalling. Don't ask me how the link has that title - the article is on brick!
I really am finding that all these high dollar brick homes may be giving a false sense of value. These issues are occuring on nicer homes not just the quickly thrown together tract homes [my current home IS a tract home with the typical brick on front, vinyl on the sides but we are now attuned to it and seeing it on nicer homes]
Hey, Nancy! I gotta tell ya . . . having lived in brick homes all my life . . . here in NC, unless someone has done a shoddy job w/ mortar, you really should not be having problems.
That being said . . . I went on-site to check out some of the above $800,000 homes here in S. Charlotte, while crews were around, and I was appalled at what I saw. Illegals doing the labor . . . and some really shoddy workmanship. I call these "sweetheart" houses - they cost a lot, look upscale but were built using every short cut, including illegal labor . . . they look great but eventually the lousy workmanship will start showing up.
I think those houses, despite looking nice and costing from $800,000 to well over $1 M, are gonna have all sorts of problems in a few years - including mortar problems. One of my friends had to have her whole driveway torn up on her less than one year old home - precisely b/c the crew doing it did not mix the cement right. Her garage floor, drive way and sidewalk looked like a wrecking ball had crumbled it.
I think there is a lot of shoddy work going on out there . . .
Deteriorated mortar in a 1900's house is pretty common, since it's about 100 years old. It just gets soft. If mortar is getting soft in a 15 year old home, there was something wrong with the initial installation - sealing or no sealing.
Spalling bricks can just happen, after all they are a man made product and made out of clay. However, spalling is not something that is common on newer homes. One or two bricks, OK, but more than a couple, maybe something wrong with the bricks.
Small holes? In the mortar? You can get tuck point or caulk the gaps.
Is the moisture only showing up in the mortar? And only in one place? How is the moisture getting there?
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