Moisture and Your Home’s Bricks. Moisture can do a great amount of damage to your home. This is especially true when you live in a climate where freezing occurs. Water turns to ice which expands when frozen and this can cause quite a lot of damage to your bricks and concrete products in your home.
Bricks for building may be made from clay, shale, soft slate, calcium silicate, concrete, or shaped from quarried stone. However, true bricks are ceramic, and therefore created by the action of heat and cooling.
Clay is the most common material, with modern clay bricks formed in one of three processes – soft mud, dry press, or extruded.
As a Professional Home Inspector I come across many brick homes where the brick weeping holes have been filled, commonly with spray foam, this is not permitted as the weeping holes are very important to the maintenance of brick. This weep holes should be spaced 600 mm apart or 24 inches. Plastic or metal preformed weep holes can be utilized to keep our insects etc.
Poor workmanship is one of the main causes of brick failure. Poor mortar mixing, allowing mortar to dry out, poor storage of masonry units, and unbonded mortar on joints all lead to potential for mortar cracking and the intrusion of moisture which causes deterioration and spalling. The proper application of mortar will affect how well the bricks will repel rain and other moisture issues.
Brick walls are never waterproof. Bricks and mortar are able to absorb a great deal of moisture in multiple ways and must be able to breathe to eliminate this moisture. Sealing weeping holes eliminates the drainage of the space behind bricks which also allows for air movement in cavity. Solar heat will drive moisture on surface of bricks through into the cavity adding to moisture content.
There are two common types of window sills, brick and concrete sills. Both of these sills are susceptible to moisture damage in winter climates. Any small crack or failure for mortar to bond to bricks provides an entry point for moisture. The freezing cycle will continue to expand these tiny cracks until brick damage occurs.
The Barrie Home Inspector routinely comes across this problem at the early stages of mortar cracking and routinely points out to his clients the benefits of maintenance in preventing more severe damage. The old adage of “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” is especially true in the maintenance of your brick window sills.
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