Fixing a cracked wall. How ??

[ABN]

Hi

Have a garage attached to the front of the house and intend to borrow about 3' of it to extend the downstairs cloakroom and make it into a shower room. More question will come on that at a later stage

But first need to fix the garage wall.

There is a 2 brick pillar ajoining the house. Its not tied into the house and even has damp course material betwwen it and the house. Then a single brick wall then extends some 2.9M to the next 2 brick pillar.
Where the single brick meets the pillar ajoining the house there is a settlement crack extending from the floor all the way to the roof, been there for over 40yrs. The width of the crack is about 1cm at the bottom narrowing to a hairs width at the top. The crack alterantes between the brick joint and the brick itself on a row by row basis i.e. 1 brick cracked then 1 joint cracked.

So before I start on the converstion feel that I should fix it

But how ????????

 

[noseall]

without actually seeing your situation, it's pretty hard to comment.

in a lot of scenarios these problems are best left alone, or totally rebuilt altogether.

repair jobs can be so time consuming or the bricks and mortar so hard, that a re-build is the only option.

if you do re-build then do so by tieing into the house using stainless steel wall starters.

 

[ABN]

Thanks for the reply.

Under normal suituation I would leave it alone, been like it for 40+ yrs. However since the wall will now be the outer wall of someform of cavity wall do feel that it should be fixed or made water tight at least.

Currently unemployed so time is of little importance, will give me something to while away the hours.

Cost however is, have a few savings so get no form of support/benifits, so the savings need to be conserved as much as possible. Thus rebuilding the wall would seem to be a rather expensive option.

 

[noseall]

providing the mortar joints line up, drill out the broken bricks and all the intermediate half bricks up the crack line and tooth bond the two walls together.

 

[ABN]

yup the mortar joints line up and fortunatly the bricks that "tie" into the pillar are not broken.

I'm not that clued up on this type of work could you please explain "tooth bond"
When you say drill out the broken bricks would I be using a simple masoary drill or is there a tool for it?
Have tried, with not to much luck, to cement bricks into an exsiting wall and had problems. buttered the ends, bottom, top but when fitting the new brick it pushes the mortar out. I then found it difficult to get what I concidered enough mortar into the small joint. Is there a trade secret trick to do this.

Would also seem like a good time to fix another problem. Although its a garage wall it is built on a damp course. When it rains with the wind in the wrong direction water enters the garage through the damp course joint. Is there a "simple" way to stop that.

Sorry for being so dim and all the questions.

 

[ABN]

One other thought.
Since I'm not bothered about the internal appearance it will be covered with the new internal wall, and with the anticipated difficulty fitting the new brick into the hole. Would it be alright to fill all the space left by the brick removal with cement then cut the brick to say 1/3 width and push that into the cement from the outside, a bit like cladding, or would this not be strong enough.

 

[noseall]

with a decent s.d.s drill you should be able to winkle out the bricks once enough of the mortar joint has been removed.

a plugging chisel and club hammer will be useful too.

as for slotting new bricks back in.....well thats the tricky bit.

i personally would refit the bricks whole, as you will need their bonding strength.


it helps to give everything a good damping down first.

a good dose of plasticiser in the mortar coupled with a strongish mix will also help.

butter the area the brick is to be laid in and butter the brick too.

this way more of the mortar gets to where you need it .

carefully force point any mortar into the joints you have left.

 

[Static]

Are you sure the settlement has stopped? would be pointless to fill in a crack that will just reappear in the winter.

 

[ABN]

Since the house was built in the early 60's I would hope that the settlement has finished ... but with all this dry weather you can never be sure

Thanks for the advice will start in a few days. Got to speak to the neighbours first as I need access to their property to do it. Will do the job in 4 stages, with a few days inbetween, so that the wall end is not compleatly unsupported.

Any suggestion on stopping the damp course leaking ?