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My old foreman said to stop soaking bricks in July, and he was right
Back in 2019 I was laying a porch wall in Tucson during a dry stretch when my foreman Frank walked by and told me to quit dunking the bricks in the water trough. I figured he was just being cheap about the mortar, but he said the adobe would pull moisture out of the mud faster than the sun would and the wall would set harder. I did it his way and got a straight run of 14 courses with no shifting, and the joints looked better than anything I had done that summer. Has anyone else noticed a big difference in how bricks take mortar depending on the time of year?
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beth_hunt26d ago
The part about "the adobe would pull moisture out of the mud faster than the sun would" is what got me. I had to read that twice because it sounds backwards at first. But it makes sense when you think about it, a dry brick is like a sponge and it will suck the water right out of the mortar before it has a chance to cure. We always soaked ours in the summer too, and now I'm wondering if we were making the joints weaker the whole time without knowing it. Fourteen courses with no shifting in that heat is hard to argue with.
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