Rupert! What were you thinking?

[Geoff]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Child Of Midian" <md at ...> wrote:

Miles:
> I do not think you have to worry. There are many brick buildings in my home 
> town which are much older than 40 years, and I never heard that the cement 
> had to be replaced..
> This one 
> http://www.schoenes-deutschland-in-bildern.de/gelsenkirchen_ehem_postgebaude
> .jpg 
> is about 100 years old, and believe me, it does not fall apart ;).
> 
> Miles, who really does not think that millennia of human brick experience 
> lead to crumbling buildings all over the world

md:
> You don't replace the cement, it's simply a refacing. It's more like
> grouting tile, you just scrape or sand-blast the mortar then apply a surface
> layer of cement and strike the joints. All brick structures need it
> eventually, it's inevitable that some of the cement will crack and come
> apart, all buildings settle, all cement and concrete wears down under the
> elements. Stone faced buildings need it as well.

Geoff:
My father was a bricklayer after he came out of the army at the end of 
WWII. He often got involved with pointing and told me about it.

It depends a lot on the quality of the original work. The usual reason 
for re-pointing is to restore the facing of the mortar so that it has an 
angled slope away from the brick, the idea being that when it rains, 
the water thus runs away from the brickwork and falls off instead of 
remaining where it can permeate the brickwork and cause deterioration.

As Child of Midian has said, it is usually only the surface of the mortar 
which needs replacing or even only smoothing off.

We live in a house which is 74 years old and the state of the pointing is 
excellent - without any work having been done on it in that time.