Brick work

[Westholme]

I need to replace eight modern bricks in an external wall, as shown in the first photo. I bought some matching old bricks from a local reclamation yard. It was a struggle to find 10 usable ones, but they only cost a pound each.





I've never done any brickwork and I'd like some advice. The old bricks are 9" x 3" x 4¼" and ten bricks plus mortar measure 33½-33¾" high, mostly 33½". This means mortar layer is 0.35" or about 3/8" thick. The original lime mortar is a light sandy colour, as shown in the second photo.





What tools and equipment should I buy? What is the best place to buy lime mortar and what sort should I get? The old bricks have a frog on one side. Should this be facing up or down? Should I remove all eight modern bricks before replacing any? I don't want to damage any of the original bricks. Would the old one above bricks 1 and 2 stay in place when the latter are removed?

There is some paint on some nearby bricks. What is the best way to remove this?

 

[MikeG]

Good luck with this. It's a tough place to start bricklaying, in face brickwork in the middle of a wall where every little thing will be on display. I've laid tens of thousands of bricks, and I'd approach that one quite carefully!

The thing is, there is so much muck smeared onto the face of the surrounding bricks that I'd either be looking to re-lay those too, or I'd be trying acid to clean them. It'd be nice to see a photo of the bricks you've bought. Put half a pack of bricks aside in a stack, and build the other half into a wall, and then wait 20 years. Offer the stored bricks up against those in the wall and they'll look completely different, despite being the exact same brick. Brick matching is witchcraft!

As to your questions.......

-frogs up, unless you are really struggling to get the bricks down low enough to their line.
-you need a trowel, a pointing trowel, and a "bucket-handle" pointing tool. Unless you are planning on laying lots of bricks, the cost of these is going to run to £50 to £80 new, which would be more than enough to get a professional bricklayer to come and do the work. So, I suggest you try and buy secondhand. Your favourite online auction site might be a place to start, as well as car boot sales and the like.
-lime putty will be from a lime specialist in your area. "Yell.com" is your starting point if you don't know of any.
-don't worry, none of the surrounding bricks will come loose in removing the new ones (which won't be a straightforward task, BTW...........I would drill one out, with a big 10-12mm masonry drill, drilling dozens of holes around probably brick 3 or 6 where there are no original bricks you can damage. I would then sacrifice an old handsaw or buy a cheap £5 jacksaw and saw out as much of the beds of the surrounding bricks as you can. Only then would I pick up a lump hammer & cold chisel).
-Do all your removals first. You don't want dust to discolour your mortar, nor do you want to be dropping bricks onto your newly laid bricks.
-Paint.........gently scrape to see if there is any mileage in that. If not, then take a view on leaving it alone, or using brick acid.

Good luck! Keep the face of the bricks you lay clean and clear of mortar.

 

[plasticpigeon]

I've done quite a lot of this in my house. It is more tricky than laying a wall afresh but not too bad. I'll relay my experience as an amateur. I, like you, had never done any thing like this before starting on my own house, but after a while it becaome easier. I would clean the face of the bricks in the wall with brick acid first to get the old mortar off the bricks that you want to keep. if the mortar used is soft enough you may be able to use a hand held masonry saw to cut the mortar (please see link for an example). If not then Mike's way using a drill is the only choice. Once a couple of brick are out you shoudl be able to bash the rest out. I've bought very cheap tools from my local hardware shop. A bucket trowel, pointing trowel, bucket and perhaps some finger trowels depending on how you want the pointing to look. I'm not fan of bucket handle and prefer the pointing flush and ruled, or perhaps slightly recessed. A bigger bricklaying trowel is probably not needed if you are just doing this small area as you can use a pointiung towel to get the mortar on the beds. Each costs around £5 if you don't buy the best.

One thing I can say is don't use sharp sand in the mortar despite what the conservation people say, it is almost impossible to lay bricks with as it locks up solid when compressing it. it is particularly important to be able to joggle the brick about easily when trying to fill holes. Plastering sand is sharp but fine and is a better sand I think. You can add soft building sand for colour. Wet the bricks before laying, old bricks suck the water out of the mortar very fast, I've had luck with using a pump action sprayer. Bagged hydraulic lime is a bit more convenient than lime putty as it has a certain amount of chemical set and is proably more available. I can get it at a local builder's yard called Tippers. I have found NHL2, the least hydraulic to be best as 3.5 ends up quite hard after a year or so. Sand to lime 3:1 is what is recommended. You have to try and fill the perpendicular joints any way you can, obviously the last brick in a line is tricky and you usually have to fill the perpendicular joints either side from above if possible and I have fashioned various bits of wood to compress the mortar in hard to reach places. Same with the top brick. You'll have the get it in the right place sitting on a bed of mortar, and then fill above the brick by using a pointing trowel as if you were pointing but putting in more and mor mortar and foring it to the back of the joint with a scrap of wood a bit thinner than the joint until the whole volume is filled. Awkward and time consuming. The morons who did brickwork on my house when I moved in just pointed up the void when it came to a tricky bit like this, hence my mis trust of tradespeople now. It may be easier to rake out the mortar to a couple of cm and point it all when you have the bricks in the right place. I think a good bricklayer would be able to point as they went along, but chances are it will be a slow job if you are new to it, and pointing will give a better result. Like all these skills there is no substitute for practice, and if it goes wrong, knock it out and start again!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/20-Inch-500mm-TCT-Masonry-Block-Cutting-Brick-Slate-Concrete-Slate-Cement-Saw-/122015455101

 

[Lime]

I'd remove the smear from off the bricks and then see how it looks.
You will have a very hard time making your work as good if you have little experience.
Even a professional is unlikely to be able to improve on what you have.
Personally I'd leave it.
Those bricks will not come out easily without some damage because they are set in cement.
Is this a single brick or a cavity wall?
I ask because I can see no headers.
If it is only a single skin of bricks go very easy with any "bashing", the old bricks will loosen incredibly easily.

 

[Flyfisher]

Good luck with this. It's a tough place to start bricklaying, in face brickwork in the middle of a wall where every little thing will be on display. I've laid tens of thousands of bricks, and I'd approach that one quite carefully!

The thing is, there is so much muck smeared onto the face of the surrounding bricks that I'd either be looking to re-lay those too, or I'd be trying acid to clean them. It'd be nice to see a photo of the bricks you've bought. Put half a pack of bricks aside in a stack, and build the other half into a wall, and then wait 20 years. Offer the stored bricks up against those in the wall and they'll look completely different, despite being the exact same brick. Brick matching is witchcraft!

I'm far from being a half-decent brickie but I've done enough of it to know my limitations and definitely agree that matching existing work is right up the tough end of the scale!

Like MikeG, the first thing I noticed is the smearing of the new brickwork onto the old and my approach would be to clean things up first. You may well find that the new bricks don't stick out nearly as much once the smearing has been removed and you would then be in a much better position to judge how 'visually offensive' they really are.

'Brick acid' is the thing to clean the existing bricks and is readily available at any builders merchants. If the smearing is persistent then you could try 'Spirits of Salts', which is a more concentrated version of the same hydrochloric acid and can be found in more traditional hardware stores (generally the big DIY sheds). It's cheap as chips and a useful thing to have on the shelf if you're doing brick/stone/tile work. Keep it on the top shelf though if you have little people in the house and take basic sensible precautions when using it. No need to be scared of the stuff, just respectful and careful.

A cleaned up photo would be welcomed for further comments

 

[stuart45]

When matching in old brickwork the colour of the mortar can make a difference to the finished looks as well as having the correct bricks.
The pointing looks like it's been weatherstruck with a pointing trowel, so you may want to use that method.

 

[88v8]

All good advice.
One could so easily make things worse.

The valuable takeaway from this is that you never ever allow anyone to work on your house who thinks that brick or stonework should be done with cement.

Two things I'd add;

- if you can grow a shrub in front of the blot, or send a climber over it, the problem will disappear.
- if you clean the numbers off the new bricks, they will be much less conspicuous.

Ivor

 

[Westholme]

Thanks for all the replies. Some more info:

The yellow numbers on the bricks do not exist in reality. Looking at them again, the old bricks have two frogs, of sorts, lozenge-shaped on top with makers' name and location only about ¼" deep, a larger rectangle on the bottom but even shallower.

All the muck on both new and old bricks is smeared cement that should have been wiped off when the job was done (before I bought the house). The shadow at the top of the first photo is from a boiler flue, the boiler itself is in the original "outside" toilet, physically part of the house but not accessible from inside.

The right half of bricks 4 and 8 will be hidden by a new soil pipe in the near future, which is the main reason for replacing the bricks. It's now or never, really. The wall in question is about 23' long and 15' high and has no headers except at the door and three windows. The gable end return shared with next door has some extra headers downstairs but otherwise it's all stretchers except at the toilet door and upstairs window.

I have a reciprocating saw and some tungsten carbides blades. I won't remove any bricks unless I'm convinced I can do it with causing any damage, however. I'll buy some brick acid and clean off the muck first. The standard size seems to be 5 litres, which is far too much, but I have quite a lot of blue brick paviours with mortar on. Advice on how to use varies, some say wash off before fizzing stops, others say wait for fizzing to stop. I have wrap-around goggles. Do I need special gloves?

 

[stuart45]

If you acid wash a brick wall it's best to soak the wall first so that the acid isn't sucked into the wall and joints, but stays on the surface where it's needed.
Bricks can also be cleaned by rubbing with a slightly softer brick.

 

[stuart45]

-frogs up, unless you are really struggling to get the bricks down low enough to their line

Correct, although with LBC Flettons it was said to save about 30% mortar laying frog down.
In the USA frog down is considered the correct method as they say that water can collect in the frog when laid frog up.

 

[Hobden]

Correct, although with LBC Flettons it was said to save about 30% mortar laying frog down.

How so?

 

[stuart45]

LBC Flettons have got really deep frogs. Laying frog up you have to fill the frogs as you lay out the bed, so it uses more mortar. When doing pricework on site most subbies would lay frog down. In the 70's when Flettons were used a lot on site it caused a lot of arguments between the subbies and the firms. In the end the London Brick Company did some tests and concluded that up to 2 storeys it was OK to lay frog down.

 

[paulc]

A couple of points from this leaflet - http://www.ibstock.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/TIS-B18-LAYING-FROGGED-BRICKS-1.pdf

Bricks laid frog up will produce a stronger wall and reduce the transmission of noise due to the greater density. As for water collecting in the frog - If it is filled with mortar, there shouldn't be anywhere for water to pool.

 

[stuart45]

Frog up is the correct method in this country, but on the majority of sites I've worked on with Fletton bricks most of the brickies laid them frog down for speed.

 

[Hobden]

Frog up is the correct method in this country, but on the majority of sites I've worked on with Fletton bricks most of the brickies laid them frog down for speed.

Are you saying they don't bother to fill the frogs when laying frog down???

 

[stuart45]

The frogs were not filled as this would slow them down more than laying frog up.

 

[MikeG]

-frogs up, unless you are really struggling to get the bricks down low enough to their line

Correct, although with LBC Flettons it was said to save about 30% mortar laying frog down.
In the USA frog down is considered the correct method as they say that water can collect in the frog when laid frog up.

I lay the top course of a brick plinth frog-down, but otherwise it's frog-up as the frog is full of mortar and therefore can't fill with water. This with the proviso that frog-down is the best way of getting a brick down if the courses are creeping high, or if, say, the concrete has been cast a tad high in the footing.

 

[stuart45]

The theory in the USA is that moisture soaks into the mortar in the frogs more and in a severe freeze thaw climate can cause damage. This is of course their theory and not ours.

 

[Zebra]

- if you clean the numbers off the new bricks, they will be much less conspicuous.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Westholme]

Correction: I spoke to a builder today doing some work on an identical house down the street and the old wall with the modern bricks has a 2" cavity. This should make removing bricks easier and safer as a boiler is attached to the inner leaf behind the modern bricks. I have no intention of filling this cavity with insulation.

As can be seen in the photos, the wall has been repointed with cement but it is only a shallow layer. I think I might remove it and repoint properly with lime mortar. So that I can work at my own pace, I am considering buying an aluminium scaffolding tower. Any thoughts?

I need scaffolding regardless of repointing to replace guttering and fix new drain and soil pipes.