Cracked Corner Brick Veneer

Is Cracked Brick Always a Foundation Issue. Living in North Texas, we are all aware that the brick veneer on our homes may eventually experience some cracking.

The soil in our region is either a sandy loam or an expansive, plastic clay — both of which present challenges to the builder attempting to ensure a stable foundation. When cracks appear in the brick, we assume we need a foundation repair company to make an evaluation. After one of these evaluations, you may be told you don’t need any foundation work. Why then, would your brick be cracking, especially near the corners of the home? And, the corner of the concrete foundation below may also be cracked or even broken off. Well, I may have some comforting news for you: if your home has clay brick, this cracking could simply be caused by moisture in the environment. Why are the bricks on my house cracking.

Millions of homeowners find cracks in their veneers, chimneys and steps near the corners or where the masonry would be its weakest, like.

Millions of homeowners find cracks in their veneers, chimneys and steps near the corners or where the masonry would be its weakest, like. Http:// Home Inspector Nashville writes: Repair cracks in brick mortar joints can be a sign of foundation movement. I'd first want someone to dig down to find out what the brick veneer is. Check approximately 2 o 2 1/2 ft on either side of wall crack for small. At a house today there were a lot of cracks in the veneer but not so bad at If the cracks are at a corner, is there proper grading and/or gutter.

North Texas sports hundreds of different brick colors, manufactured not only in Texas and adjacent Oklahoma, Arkansas and even Mexico, but also from locations far removed like Georgia, Alabama and Virginia. Clay brick are formed by the manufacturer from their local clays and fired in a kiln. Firing the brick evaporates all moisture from the body of the brick. So once a clay brick cools, that is the smallest that brick will ever be. Normally, bricks are shipped to the job site and installed in walls within weeks or months of being fired.

The brick are laid, the mortar sets and a remarkable event begins to occur: the walls all grow in length, simply by absorbing moisture into themselves. Forty foot long clay brick walls can increase in length by a half inch. The results of a wall growing longer is not so much a problem for the wall in itself as much as it is where walls intersect.

So, if the long wall on your home was the side of the house, the evidence of the moisture expansion would be visible near the corners of that wall at the front and back of the home. This will manifest in the form of diagonal and/or vertical cracks in the brick, and also often in the concrete corner below. How can you prevent brick walls cracking. To offset the moisture expansion of clay brick walls, builders who understand this issue will direct the brick masons to create narrow open gaps in the brick veneer at regular intervals anywhere from 3/8 to 1/2 inch wide. The caulking contractor will come by after the bricklayer is done and install a flexible foam rope-like material called a backer rod into the gap and then caulk to keep rain out.

Weep holes in brick veneer are often clogged with cement mortar, causing for things to shift and crack around our neck of the woods, brick veneer is easier to a one inch space between the sheathing and the back side of the brick wall.

If these gaps or expansion joints are created correctly by the bricklayer, they will subdivide the spans of brick walls allowing adjacent spans to expand toward one another. Moisture expansion in brick takes as little as nine months, and usually ends within five to ten years in North Texas. The caulk in a healthy expansion joint more than five years old should appear to be compressed or extruded. A pristine expansion joint of this age may indicate the bricklayer did not clean all of the mortar droppings and extrusions out of the joint prior to its being caulked. This is most prevalent at window sills, where the joint was not left open all the way up to the window frame. Once a clay brick wall has completed its moisture expansion, the brick size remains constant and the wall will not grow further.

Conversely, if the bricks are limestone concrete brick, the walls will actually shrink. Expansion joints in concrete brick walls will widen over time, as the wall sections recede from one another. So, if you see cracks in your brick walls, don't get discouraged! Have your walls examined by a structural engineer or a qualified repair mason who is familiar with this subject.

You may only need some aesthetic corrections to your brick.