Indy Total Construction

Basic masonry repairs include:

• Filling in dings in floors and driveways
• Replacing a block or brick
• Repointing mortar

To patch concrete first remove all loose material from the old concrete. Use a vacuum cleaner. Then scrub away any oil or grease with hot water and trisodium phosphate (TSP). Use a stiff brush. Protect your hands with rubber gloves.

After the concrete is clean, wet it. Fill in the patch. The best mix for patching concrete is one part Portland cement to three parts fine, clean sand. Add concrete glue to help feather out the edges of your patch and secure it to the old concrete. Leave a wet rag or gunny sack over the patch for a couple days.

Replace a broken or missing concrete block with the same mix. Chisel the old mortar away. Soak the new block in water for five minutes and wet the blocks around the hole. Trowel in mortar on all sides and set in the new block. You may have to take some mortar out little by little to make the block fit. Keep nudging the block with your trowel handle or a piece of wood. Don’t use a hammer.

Once the block is in place and aligned, tool the joint to match the rest of the wall. If the other joints are tuckpointed (grooved) make the new joint match. Wipe up any mortar spilled on the face of the block before it hardens.

Use a finishing tool to finish mortar joints after the mortar begins to harden.

When you replace a brick or block, trowel in mortar around the opening. Nudge the block in place with the handle of a trowel or a piece of wood.

To patch concrete, clean and wet the area. Fill in the area and feather the edges so the patch will stick.

Replacing a fired (red) brick is the same as a concrete block. But be very careful to match the color or your replacement will stand out..

Try not to spill mortar over the face of the brick. If you do, you can remove the stain with acid and a stiff brush. BE CAREFUL WHEN WORKING WITH ACID. Always add the acid to water. Adding water to acid can cause an explosion. Protect yourself with goggles and rubber gloves. Wear old clothing. Muriatic acid will remove clothes, eyes, and skin faster than it will remove the mortar stain.

Repointing is putting new mortar into joints when the old mortar is falling out. First clean out the crumbling mortar. You can make a tool for this by nailing through a block of wood until the point of the nail extends 1/2 inch. Slide this point along the joints and you won’t dig too deep. Then wet the bricks and flush out loose mortar with a good strong hose jet.

Mix no more mortar than you can use in one hour. If you are repointing a whole wall or chimney, use any color mortar. However, if you are patching only a section, take care to match the color of the old mortar. Don’t work with mortar when the temperature is below freezing.

You can make a tool to remove old mortar by driving a nail through a block of wood until it extends about 1/2 inch.

Basements are simply concrete boxes set in the ground. In dry parts of the country, seasonal rains may flood a basement. In wetter areas, ground water may keep the basement damp all year. Three common basement problems are:

• Dampness

• Cracks

• Holes

If your basement has water seeping through the pores of the wall, the best solution is to waterproof it from the outside. To do this, dig down along the outside of the basement wall. Clean and coat the area with an asphalt preparation.

Another solution is to lay a drainage channel along the basement wall at ground level. This channel should slant about 1/8 inch per running foot. The wider the channel, the more it will protect the basement wall.

New basements are usually waterproofed with asphalt or plastic or a combination of the two.

Two kinds of drainage protection are possible for a basement. One is to lay a drain at the bottom of the wall in loose gravel. This carries off water before water pressure accumulates. Another solution is to build up the soil around the building so it will carry off the surface water before it soaks into the ground.

If the water can’t be stopped from the outside and is caused by a crack, use a wire brush to clean all loose material out of the crack. Shape the crack into a keyway with a chisel. Fill the keyway with mortar or epoxy cement.

Mortar is made by mixing one part mortar cement with three parts fine, sharp sand (beach sand won’t cling) and a little water or glue. Mortar shrinks when it dries, so, for a final waterproofing, cover the mortar with epoxy cement. You may fill the entire crack with epoxy cement if the wall is dry. Epoxy works better than mortar but costs more.

If the hole must be filled while it is wet, use a fast-setting hydraulic cement. Mix it according to the directions on the package and roll it into a

stick shape. As soon as the cement starts to harden, force it into the hole. Smooth it with a trowel and hold it in place until it finishes setting.

Paint damp basement walls with dry powder. Dry powder is a concrete-base paint that mixes with water and helps seal the pores of the concrete. You may also use latex paint.

If all of this fails you may have to learn to live with periodic or constant flooding. Capping the floor with cement and inclining it to the center of the basement, will create a drain channel which can be run to a sewer drain. If the basement floor is below sewer level, end the channel at a hole in the floor called a sump. A pump connected to the sump will lift water to the nearest sewer drain or the outside.