Spent 6 months stacking bricks dry before someone told me to wet them first

I always thought wetting bricks was just an old wives tale. Last Tuesday I had a job in Portland where the mortar kept drying too fast and cracking. Foreman walked over and said soak em for 20 seconds. Did a test row and the bond was night and day different. No more crumbling joints. Anyone else fight with dry bricks before figuring this out?

2 comments

2 Comments

faith_schmidt14d ago

Mike from the supply yard in Salem told me the same thing after I had already laid three courses on a retaining wall last summer. I had to pull half of them apart because the mortar was powdering out within a week. The trick is you soak them just enough to wet the surface but not so they are dripping. Too much water and the mortar runs everywhere and you get a mess. I started dunking them in a bucket for maybe 10 seconds and letting them sit for a minute before buttering. Never had a bond failure since then.

anthony98914d ago

Yeah that's the exact spot where it gets tricky. @faith_schmidt you mentioned the 10 second dunk and letting them sit which makes sense because if you soak them too long the brick is basically saturated and the mortar just slides off. I fought with that on a foundation wall last spring. Kept wondering why my joints were these big sloppy messes until I realized I was basically drowning the bricks. Tbh the real test for me was when I started checking the surface for that matte look after they sat for a minute. That's when I knew I had the water content right and the bond actually held.