Repairing Brick, Stone, or Block Walls
Block walls made of concrete are very durable but are not completely crack free. Many times you want to fix the damage to concrete walls but have no clue, as its hard or even impossible to replace an entire wall. Repairing cracks and small damages to your walls is fairly easy. Concrete patches are easily available at building stores as premixed sand and cement, or enhanced epoxy/latex mixtures.
Tools:
Repair the Wall:
- Patching mixture
- Water
- Trowel
- Putty knife
- Sledgehammer
- Gloves
- Safety goggles
- Chisel
- Dust mask
- Wooden board or taping knife
Repair the Wall:
- Use the sledgehammer, if needed, to remove tough blocks that simply will not come out. Be sure to wear safety goggles while breaking apart bricks, stone, or block because small pieces may easily fly towards you as you need to apply a large amount of force on the sledgehammer to remove tough materials.
- Prepare wall surface so as to get a strong bond with the patching compound. Use a chisel to remove the roughened edges of the damaged area and blow away dust and loosened particles, which hinder the patch’s adhering properties.
- Prepare the compound following manufacturer’s directions for use on package label, care not to let it cure before applying. To fill very small cracks, use pre-packaged mixture in cartridges.
- Simply squeeze out the material onto the crack and smooth out with small pointed trowel.
- Apply patch material to the crack. Gauge some amount of mixture and put it on a board. Hold the board against the wall just below area to fill.
- Use a putty knife to put the mixture into the hole. If you are replacing an entire brick:
- Remove brick by gently chipping away the mortar joints using a hammer and cold chisel and clear the area.
- Coat the upper surface of new brick, and the top surface of brick wall where it is going to be placed, with mortar.
- Place brick and fill more mortar into the joints as some will likely fall off when fixing it into the wall.
- Smoothen the patch or the mortar joints with pointed trowel and let it set to dry.