I bought my home 3 years ago, it is 11 years old. My front porch is made of a series of bricks laid on their sides in some kind of grout-I beleive it is cement. Anyway, the grout areas are becoming sandy-like and loose causing some bricks to actually fall off or become very shaky.There is also some minor leaking into my cellar below. What shoud I do?
Answer:
Your first job is to determine where the water is coming in because until you address that, there's not much point in doing anything else. The mortar that is falling out was probably meant to do just that - whether that was done deliberately or not is anyone's guess. Bricks are designed to lay flat and less than that will normally have them reacting to temperature and atmospheric moisture in wierd ways.
Courtesy of Ren Molnar, Construction Consultant at HomeFocus.com. I can also be reached at (613) 748-3003 and Home Focus phone-in is broadcast live 8 to 10 A.M. (Ottawa, Ont. time) on Saturdays on www.cfra.com.
