The Importance of Protecting Your Brickwork from Poor Weather

Poor weather can do much more than dampen your spirits. It can also damage your brickwork. If left unchecked, unprotected brickwork will deteriorate and lose its ability to keep out frost, rain and snow. Once this occurs, any manner of accelerated decay and its by-products can occur.

The cost to repair or reverse the damage to brickwork can be significant. As well, the safety of a structure can be greatly reduced when its brickwork has been weakened by the weather.

What Continuous Exposure to Weather can do to your Brickwork?
Brick that is allowed to be constantly saturated by water can first result in the serious and rapid decay of the mortar joints and the bricks themselves if left for long enough. Brick faces can crack and ultimately crumble as the result of frost. This is most common on chimney stacks and parapets, or anywhere that cement mortar has been used instead of the lime-based variety.

Protecting your Brickwork
There is more than one method of protecting brickwork from the damaging effects of the weather.

Coping stones can be placed on the tops of free standing walls to protect them. Brickwork that’s become damaged by the weather can undergo the rendering process, which replaces the coating on the face of the wall. Another solution is to replace damaged bricks with new ones.

Other Factors That Can Expose Your Brickwork to the Weather
Brickwork can crack and bulge as the result of spreading tree roots, which can leave it vulnerable to inclement weather. Weakening of brickwork can also occur when internal load-bearing walls are removed. Even the timber lintels that exist over doors and windows that have been allowed to rot can weaken brickwork.

In addition, brickwork can sustain damage from moisture that is drawn upwards from the ground. Known as rising damp, this condition can affect bricks as well as sandstone and mortar. It is also a slow process, with the possibility of unnoticeable damage occurring over several years before it’s detected.

Understanding the signs of brickwork damage due to weather can prevent costly repairs down the road.