Brick front steps and porches on Mobile houses

Older raised houses and cottages in Mobile have tall runs of brick steps climbing up to the porch, often with low brick walls on each side, called cheek walls, and brick piers carrying the porch floor. Houses on slabs, common in the newer subdivisions of West Mobile, tend to have a short brick stoop of a step or two at the door. They fail in different ways, but water is behind most of it.

Rain lands on every tread and has two places to go: off the front edge or down into the joints. A lot of front steps also sit under a roof edge with no gutter, or under a gutter that spills over in a summer downpour. Water soaks the treads, works into open joints, and gets into the core of the steps where it can stay for days.

Freezes are rare here. What breaks Mobile steps apart is years of water, the salts it carries out to the surface of the brick, and the ground underneath moving.

Some signs are cosmetic and some are not. Loose treads and slick steps are the ones to fix first, since those are the ones people get hurt on. Walk up slowly and check each tread for these.

• Treads or caps that rock under your foot
• Joints open across the top of the treads
• Cracked brick in the risers or cheek walls
• Green growth and mildew on shaded steps, which get slick
• Steps tipped back so water runs toward the door
• Daylight between the top step and the wall of the house

Plenty of steps only need work on the surface. If they still sit level and nothing has pulled away from the house, loose treads and caps can come up and go back down in fresh mortar, cracked brick can be cut out and replaced, and open joints repointed. The treads get a slight pitch toward the front so rain runs off instead of back toward the door.

Steps that have settled, tipped back or drifted away from the house have a problem underneath. Often they were built on a shallow base or on fill that has packed down or washed out over the years. Then the steps are taken apart, the base is dug out and made solid, and the brick is laid back up on it.

A brick porch might be a concrete slab with brick sides, a wood floor on brick piers, or brick all the way up with columns carrying the roof. The brick sides of a slab porch crack when the slab or the fill inside it settles. The piers under a raised porch take the same water as the piers under the house. And brick columns open up at the joints near the top, where the rain hits hardest.

Many Mobile steps have iron handrails with posts set straight into the brick or the cap. When the iron rusts inside the brick, the rust takes up more room than the metal did and splits the brick around the post. The rail itself is work for a welder or ironworker. The cracked brick and the joint around the post are masonry, and fixing them means dealing with how the post sits in the brick.

Front steps and porches are some of the most visible brick on a house in Oakleigh, Old Dauphin Way, Church Street East and Mobile's other historic districts. Ask the City of Mobile whether changes need review before anything is taken apart.

One from the side so any tilt shows, one from the front, and one close up of the worst spot. Text them to Donald at (251) 305-5966 with your part of town. Donald is based in Mobile, and if you are outside the city, call or text and ask.