DIY brick patching

[Cycledelic68]

I have a short brick wall around some bushes in front of my house and recently the bricks have been cracking and falling off. I decided to try patching it and painting it with specailly made paint from Sherwin Williams.

I made a video here.
brick patching

 

[Cycledelic68]

Before patching and painting.

 

[Cycledelic68]

Interesting idea here

 

[Cycledelic68]

You can see that brick wall here, too, in a picture from the 1960's.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/118358651/william-garland-huddle

https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2024/112/118358651_4d6cad59-a8e9-4eb3-9531-384e55719231.jpeg

 

[Da Gas Man]

My condolences on Bill's passing at such a young age. It must have been a most
difficult time for the family. Must have been many shared experiences by
that old wall. Definitely worth repairing. Thank you for sharing this with us
and the helpful how-to on the repairs. I'll be using this technique on a couple
of chimney bricks.

 

[Cycledelic68]

Someone told me Bill died in a car accident. I've been patching up the brick wall enough so it looks OK from a distance. I think the plant roots are pushing the bricks out and making them crack.

 

[Da Gas Man]

Someone told me Bill died in a car accident. I've been patching up the brick wall enough so it looks OK from a distance. I think the plant roots are pushing the bricks out and making them crack.

Poor Bill. Sad that. I mistakenly thought you were related and that was Bill's old wall years ago.
My mind does tend to jump to conclusions. I do think your patchwork technique looks great.
That I got right.

 

[Cycledelic68]

Another dead neighbor
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133784069/graham-bunch
Someone told me he died after injecting some alleged drug he got off the street in a bad neighborhood in DC. This happened after I tried to warn him about that.

 

[Cycledelic68]

Morning glories grown from seeds collected from various places. The ones with the heart shaped leaves appear to be Ipomea Purpurea and the ones with the ivy shaped leaves appear to be Ipomea hederacea.

 

[axeman88]

I think spalling is generally a result of moisture, penetrating into the bricks. When there is a freeze cycle, the expansion of the water inside the porous brick causes a chunk to spall off.

One combats this by sealing the masonry, so the water can't penetrate. Your wall should, in my opinion, have a heavy waterproof coating on the inside, against the soil, and be clear sealed on top and the exposed side. Don't neglect to provide the weep holes that allow water already inside the wall to escape again.

Bricks that are already broken need to be cut out and replaced. Personally, I like to use a mortar mixture that is higher in lime. Lime based mortars are more resilient, and adaptive than high portland based mortars.

I don't personally like the idea of parging or painting brick, although parging is essential to certain cement block construction methods. The coating can hold moisture IN, and cause more problems than protection. I consider a painted or parged brick wall to be a statement that there are deeper problems.