Invisible mend

Spotted the other day in Ewell village, accompanied by a chap who was clearly pleased with his work and was happy to tell me all about it.

We start with various cracks running up the building.

Rendering stripped off around the cracks, which turn out to caused by serious cracks in the underlying brickwork. Patching over with a bit of new rendering is not going to do the trick.

So he comes up with the following. Every third course, strip a horizontal stripe of rendering off the mortar line, across the crack. Strip out the mortar itself to a depth of about an inch. Firmly inject some brown plastic goo into the back of the resulting slot to a depth of about a third of an inch. Place special bar on top of the goo, the same sort of ribbed steel bar used for reinforcing concrete. Inject further brown goo on top of the bar, with the goo being  finished off at the face of the brickwork. Leave it to go off - with the brown goo setting to something extremely hard and cunningly designed not to pull away from the dry brickwork and mortar along the way. To bond good and proper at all points. I did not think to ask whether one wets the slot before putting in the goo - as one would if one was repointing with mortar.

In due course, patch the surface rendering. In due course, repaint the whole wall. And if one has done it right there is nothing of crack to be seen. And nothing will be seen for years to come. All done from a ladder with a little help from Bosch (see http://www.bosch-pt.co.in for the finest power tools in or from the sub-continent).

It all seemed rather clever. Also rather expensive, but a good deal cheaper than cutting out great chunks of brickwork, if not the whole wall.

PS: but did he check the foundations? Is the whole building moving about? Has it stopped moving about? If it has stopped moving about, why does one need such a serious mend? Visit to TB for a serious discussion clearly indicated.