Mortar is designed to be the sacrificial part of a brick wall. It wears before the bricks do, and when it has worn back far enough, water starts getting into the wall. Repointing replaces that perished mortar — but only if it is done with the right mortar and the joints are prepared properly. Bad repointing does more damage to an old brick house than no repointing at all.
Melbourne Building Repairs repoints brickwork across Melbourne, including period homes where matching the original mortar matters as much as the workmanship.
When brickwork needs repointing
Look for mortar that is crumbling or can be raked out with a screwdriver, joints that have eroded back more than a few millimetres from the brick face, gaps or holes in the joints, damp or staining on internal walls backing onto the affected brickwork, white efflorescence on the brick face, and vegetation or moss establishing itself in the joints.
The mortar matters more than the pointing
This is the single most important thing to understand before anyone repoints an older Melbourne home. Solid brick houses built before roughly the 1930s were laid in soft lime mortar. That mortar is deliberately weaker than the bricks, so it takes up movement and lets the wall breathe and dry out.
When a hard modern cement mortar is used to repoint that brickwork, the mortar becomes stronger than the brick. Movement and moisture can no longer escape through the joint, so they go through the brick instead. The result is spalling — the faces of the bricks blowing off — and trapped damp inside the wall. It is common, it is expensive to reverse, and it is caused entirely by using the wrong mortar.
We match the mortar to the wall: lime-based mixes for solid and period brickwork, and appropriately specified cement mixes for later construction where that is what the wall was built with.
How we repoint
- Assess the brickwork and existing mortar — identifying the original mix, the construction type, and any structural cracking that needs to be dealt with first.
- Rake out the joints — removing perished mortar to a depth of at least twice the joint width, so the new mortar has something to key into. Shallow surface pointing falls out.
- Clean and dampen — clearing dust and controlling suction so the new mortar cures properly rather than drying out too fast.
- Match the mix — matching strength, sand colour and aggregate to the existing mortar.
- Repoint and finish — filling the joints fully and finishing to the original joint profile, whether that is flush, weathered, ironed or raked.
- Cure and clean down — protecting the work while it cures and cleaning the brick faces.
Matching heritage and period brickwork
On period properties the finished joint has to match what is already there in colour, texture and profile, or the repointed section stands out permanently. We match sand and aggregate to the original mortar and reproduce the existing joint profile, so repaired areas blend into the rest of the elevation.
Repointing and structural cracking
If brickwork is cracked as well as perished, repointing on its own will not hold — the crack will reopen through the new mortar. Where there is structural cracking we stabilise the wall first with HeliFix crack stitching, then repoint over the completed repair so the finished wall is both sound and unmarked.
Related repairs
We also carry out HeliFix crack stitching, lintel replacement, render crack repairs and concrete crack repairs.
Repointing across Melbourne
Based in Prahran, we repoint brickwork on period homes, houses, apartment buildings and commercial properties across metropolitan Melbourne.
For an assessment of your brickwork, call 0468 800 300 or request a quote.