Feeling its all too much Last question (3)

[L1zzy]

3. At the front of the house was originally a beautiful brick wall - its about 8feet long by 4foot high and an end section about 3feet long and 3 feets high . Some bright spark decided to concrete render the entire wall and then....paint it white! The paint is all peeling off and bubbly and there are large cracks across teh entire face of teh wall - for light relief between stripping window frames I've been stripping the paint off the wall - curiously satisfying!! trouble is I'm thinking its all a waste of time and i should pull the render all off the wall (the wall is soaking underneath unsurprisingly!) then I think no I can patch teh cracks, then i think now its could be rerendered......helpful advice appreciated!! By the way a salient point is that the foundation round this wall is currently....CONCRETE!! and is about to be removed & the level reduced to correct the height to the front wall of the house and the area gravelled so teh wall should then be able to 'breathe'.

 

[skier-hughes]

I'm confused...

Mind you it doesn't take much to do that.....

Is this a wall seperate to the house?

If you remove the foundations won't the wall fall down?

Graham

 

[L1zzy]

Hi there - this front wall is seperate to the house - Imagine a cottage with a sort of front yard bounded at front and one side by the said wall. The 'yard' is currently laid to concrete and so abutts the front wall of the cottage- its this that is going to be removed as it is too high to enable the fornt wall of teh cottage to breathe. - hope this helps?

 

[Penners]

Lizzy

Your plan to hack the rendering off the wall, in order to let it breathe, seems laudable. However I have a couple of concerns.

Firstly, one has to wonder why it was rendered in the first place. It's possible that this was done because the brickwork was badly deteriorated and the owner couldn't afford to rebuild the wall. So when you take the rendering off, you may not find anything too pristine.

Secondly, hacking off the rendering could cause more damage. If it all falls off easily, that's well and good, but if you have to start wellying it with a bolster and lump hammer, you could well knock the brickwork apart - particularly if it's just one brick thick.

Sorry that's all rather pessimistic, but I'm just suggesting that - before you start - you should formulate a "what if" plan, because there won't be any going back. If it turns out to be a disaster, can you afford to get the wall rebuilt (or do it yourself)?

 

[L1zzy]

mmm Penners - good food for thought - I would need a backup plan - I'm begining to get the sense that it might be best to go for the middle course of action and repair the cracks and repaint appropriately with breathable paint ,see what happens once the surrounding concrete has been lifted and removed (ie see if wall dries out) You see the render thats cracked isn't 'bulging' yet so it may be that it is more adhered to the bricks than I think?

 

[Penners]

Lizzy - if the wall is renderd with cement, I shouldn't worry about breathable paint. It ain't gonna breathe!

 

[L1zzy]

True !!

 

[Gervase]

As Penners says, much depends on the quality of the brickwork underneath. Old, soft bricks can be very vulnerable, particularly at lower levels above asphalt or concrete - rain splash and spray from passing traffic can blast out the brick leaving just the mortar!
However there's nowt wrong with experimenting with removing some of the render. Try and find out what the bricks are like just a foot or so from ground level. But if the render proves a b*gger to remove, you may have to accept that it's bonded permanently to the brick and look to repair with something similar, and then paint it with whatever you like.

 

[NT]

If the wall is soaked it will suffer heavy damage in winter, so you need to remove the cement mortar to let it dry out.

Regarding condition of the wall behind the render, its not possible to know unitl you pull some off. Renders do get applied for nonsensical reasons some of the time. OTOH it could turn out to be a wobbly pile of broken brick pieces. But rebuilding the wall isnt going to happen if you just pull some off to see whats going on. If whats under there is real bad, stop and decide whether to rebuild now, prop it up to keep it going as long as possible, or rerender to get a bit more life out of it.

If its old soft brick, you need to go easy when removing the mortar. What I find works well is a head on blow to dent the mortar, then angle the chisel so the mortar is being pushed sideways by the blows.

If the wall is only 4" thick it will be weak, so use enough force to detach mortar, but dont get impatient and wallop it hard. A deteriorated 4" wall may well also be unstable, so if its 4" and not in good nick I'd just do a patch and repair it before moving on.

If you do end up knocking a few bricks out, its not exactly rocket science to put them back with some mortar!


NT