Bricks, Masonry, Asphalt and Concrete - Interior Brick Spalling

Hi -

My row house was built in the 30's or 40's. It has a three story interior exposed brick wall. This is end of group wall. The exterior wall is another row of brick, further covered in stucco.

The house was a shell at one point, so I would not be surprised if the interior of the home took on water over an extended period of time. It appears to be well sealed and dry now.

On the ground floor of that wall, interior, I'm experiencing pretty severe spalling on the brick face. I would guess about 50 or so bricks, flaking badly and crumbling to the touch.

The rest of the bricks, and the mortar, seem fine (to my untrained eye).

Is there anything I can do to seal those bricks and stop the spalling? Should the bricks be replaced?

Thanks in advance for your time.

On the interior, I have only seen surface spalling under one of 2 situations: Fire and structural movement. You should be able to tell if the brick has been involved in a fire, and there will be other more obvious signs of structural movement than spalling.

If it was exposed to weather for an extended period, the location of the damaged bricks should be consistant with the exposure (pretty much all grouped together, and generally low on the wall or under windows).

Your choices for remediation are limited and expensive. You don't happen to have enough matching brick available to cut out and replace the damaged area, do you?

Thanks for your reply.

There doesn't seem to be any structural damage, no. I also don't see any evidence of a fire in some past life...

There does appear to be some white coloring to some of the brick, which may be efflorescence?

All of the spalling/crumbling soft bricks are in the same general vicinity, but not necessarily right next to each other. The problem seems relegated to the ground floor (3-story wall), and there, exists in mostly horizontal groups.

I do not have any matching bricks, but would consider anything even reasonably close.

Would you take a look at a couple of photos if I post them?

Thanks again.

Ah, now we are getting somewhere. If they are generally in a horizontal line, that indicates that you have a source of moisture entering the wall above that line. There is is probably a rowlock course just below the deteriorated brick, or the rowlock itself is deteriorated. The occurrence of efflorescence pretty much makes it certain that that is the problem.

You need to locate the source of the moisture and solve that issue, then you can either cut the brick out and replace them or you could have a professional do a surface consolidation treatment (pricey).

Does the large coverage area of efflorescence indicate a larger problem? Or is this condition just caused by *some* water *somewhere* in the wall?

There is a partial cinder block retaining wall directly on the exterior of this wall. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's possible that it is about the same height as the spalling line. Maybe it's catching water or causing some sort of gutter effect.

I am going to take a couple of quick photos tonight and post them up to a site.

Thanks again for your help. Very much appreciated.

I would say that you have diagnosed the problem. What is the waterproofing on the exterior brick surface? Does the planting bed have adequate drainage?

Show us the pictures!

Firstly - thanks again for looking into this.

I've posted several shots here:

http://69.63.133.6/brick%2Dspalling/

I guess that we've diagnosed the problem. Now I need to know how I can tell if the moisture is still an issue? Or if the condition of this brick is resulting from a past problem with the house that has since been corrected.

The house was an empty shell for a long while. It's entirely possible that it took on water during that time, and/or that the exterior wall was not in as good of shape as it is now.

These bricks have been in this condition (roughly) since I took possession of the home about 2 years ago. It's hard to say whether they've got worse, but this is definitely not something that "just happened".

Any thoughts on how to determine if there is still a moisture issue?

Thanks again.

As you can see from the photos, both areas involve rowlocked brick. Water is getting to that point and is being stopped by the rowlocked brick, so you need to look in the areas above that (and below the next rowlock course) for the water penetration.

The simplest test for moisture is to duct tape a 12x12 square of poly to the wall and leave it for 24 hours. If there is condensation on the poly after 24 hours, it is probable that you have excess moisture in the wall.

I would guess that that is old damage, however, since it looks like freeze-thaw spalling. The red specks are crushed brick used in the clay body when the brick was produced.