My brick wall failed a moisture test last week

I was working on a garden wall in Portland last Tuesday. Used a standard running bond like everyone says. Customer called me 3 days later saying water was seeping through. I went back and checked - mortar mix was fine, joints were tooled right. Problem was the brick absorption rate. Nobody talks about matching the brick to the local rainfall. I had to tear the top 4 rows off and replace with a denser clay brick. Cost me an extra $200 in materials. Has anyone else run into this with soft brick in rainy climates?

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drew_thomas925d ago

Did you check the brick's吸水 rate before you bought them? That's the kind of thing you gotta look up for your area. I ran into the same problem a few years back on a retaining wall. Soft brick just soaks up water like a sponge in a rainy place like Portland. It's a pain to learn the hard way, but now I always test a sample brick first when it's a wet climate job.