Recent content by stuart45

As Charlie said, most 50's construction used cement mortar with lime added as a plasticizer. Sand/cement mortar is not very workable without lime or plasticizer added. Building sand looks like in the photo once the surface has weathered. A course sharp sand would be hard to work with.

You can get V jointers, as well as some cheap junk, but the better ones are made by Rose. They aren't the original company, but the jointers and trowels are still good. I've still got one of the original Rose trowels with the leather handle I've had for years now. The metal on the old Rose...

There's a jointer the Yanks use called a sled runner that's good for getting a straight line along a thicker bed.

It can be cleaned, although textured bricks are a bit harder. You can get brick and mortar stains as well. If the colour of the joints was toned down a bit they wouldn't look as bad. Having really contrasting joints works really well on high quality brickwork, like a gauged arch, but not so well...

You're in a generous mood woody. I'd say he's a very inexperienced bricklayer, probably trying to tie into 2 7/8 inch imperial brickwork, which was 4 to 13 inches. This would give close to 20mm joints, which at this time of the year with damp wire cuts is why he's had the mortar oozing out and...

Every photo seems to get worse. Has your mate booked a tanker load.of acid for next week?

It's a metal tool to finish the joints. The size of them suggests he needs one the size of a scaffold tube.

That's takes some effort to lose 2 courses in that height. Maybe he's got shares in Blue Circle. Wonder if all his jobs are done like this.

Both the bed and cross joints are miles too big.

You can if you want, but it goes off really quick, so you need to work it into shape really quick. Probably best to mix up just enough for one side at a time. Normally when a drain is in use you block the inlets long enough for the final set. The benching normally doesn't get much over it in...

This was the internal wall of a barn conversation I worked on years ago. Turned out that manure had been piled up high against the wall and the salts had penetrated the wall. The wet dabs had brought them through to the surface.

Air usually goes both ways through a wall, but with a cavity wall it will normally condense on the inside of the outer skin. If your inner walls were full of salts, then condensation would be the main issue, so maybe you drylined the walls?

I've worked with lime for over 30 years now, although as a bricklayer, the plasterers did the inside work. I'm not aware of any issues using a lime plaster in an old property, apart from the fact that lime pointing and plaster aren't a miracle cure for all damp issues. What was the issue with...

Damp treatments are another story. The first question is whether rising damp can happen. Even Jeff Howell has changed his advice, saying that if it's rising damp there must be evidence of salts. The correct remedial work is often remastering with lime. Your home of 1902, probably would have had...

Photos on their own never really prove things either way. What happens in one properly can be different to another.