Brick and block foundation repair in Mobile

Houses in Mobile sit on a few kinds of masonry. Older houses and raised cottages often have brick foundation walls, or brick skirting laid between the piers to close in the crawl space. Some houses sit on concrete block walls. Many newer houses are built on a slab, with the brick veneer resting on a ledge along the slab edge.

All of it sits on the wettest ground around the house. Rain off the roof lands right beside it, and in Mobile that is a lot of rain.

Foundation masonry shows trouble in a few familiar ways.

• Cracks in block or brick foundation walls
• Stair step cracks running through the joints
• Mortar washed out or gone soft and sandy
• Loose and missing brick in the skirting
• Cracked or loose brick along a slab ledge
• White salt stains and brick that stays damp near the ground

Ground around Mobile is a mix of clay and sand, and it changes with the water. Clay swells when it is wet and shrinks when it dries. Sand can wash out from under the edge of a foundation when a downspout or a low spot sends water the same way every storm. Either way the ground under the house moves a little, and masonry does not bend. It cracks.

The big live oaks near so many Mobile houses add to it. Their roots run close to foundations and walks, and in a dry spell a big oak draws a lot of water out of the soil by the house. That is one reason some cracks open in a dry summer and close up a little after a wet spell.

Gutters and grading matter here too. Water that pools against the foundation keeps the mortar soft and keeps the ground under it on the move.

Donald repairs the masonry. That means cutting out and repointing soft or washed out mortar, replacing cracked and loose brick, and repairing cracks in brick and block foundation walls and skirting.

Some cracking is old and done moving, and repairing the masonry is the whole job. Some is a sign the house is still moving. If what Donald sees points that way, some jobs call for a structural engineer or a foundation company, and he will say so plainly. Brick repaired over a foundation that is still moving tends to crack again.

A good habit with any crack is to mark both ends with a pencil and write the date beside it. If the crack grows past the marks over a few months, that is worth knowing before anyone picks up a trowel.

On a slab house, the brick veneer sits on a ledge at the edge of the slab. Cracks there, or brick along the bottom course coming loose, are common where the ground has settled or where water sits against the house.

The bottom course on these houses has small open joints called weep holes. They let water that gets behind the brick drain back out. Dirt, mulch or fresh mortar over them traps that water inside the wall. When brick along the bottom gets repaired, the weep holes need to stay open.

Many older Mobile houses sit up on brick piers instead of a continuous wall. Leaning or cracked piers are their own kind of job. If your house sits on piers, ask Donald about them when you send photos.