Our Process
Spalling brick repair on Oviedo homes
White bloom on the brick
A white, powdery bloom on chimney brick is efflorescence, salts left behind as water evaporates. Brick industry maintenance guidance advises investigating persistent efflorescence and resolving water ingress before cleaning it, since the bloom will return while the water does.
Most efflorescence can be removed by dry brushing once the source is fixed. Where a chimney in Oviedo shows both bloom and spalled faces, our specialists treat them as two signs of the same moisture and address that moisture first. Washing it off with a hose only feeds more water into the wall, which is why we brush it dry.
Repointing the joints around the new bricks
It is hard to tell which joints in a damaged area are letting water in. For that reason, BIA maintenance guidance recommends repointing every mortar joint in the damaged section of wall, not just the joints around each replacement brick.
If the joints around the spalled bricks are soft or open, we include repointing of that area as a separate line. You see both prices, and the brick replacement and repointing are finished with the same mortar and profile. Our specialists define the area on the estimate, so the boundary of the work is clear before it starts.
Keeping the bond pattern
Chimney brick is laid in a pattern, most often a running bond with each brick centered over the joint below, sometimes with header courses or decorative details at the top. Replacement bricks go back into that same pattern, cut where the original was cut.
A repair that ignores the pattern stands out, and it can weaken the way the courses lock together. In Oviedo, the new units follow the original layout so the repaired face reads as part of the whole. Our specialists point out any cut or special brick in the pattern before work starts, so it is replaced in kind.
How new brick settles in over time
New brick looks crisp next to units that have weathered for years. Even a close match in size and color can read slightly brighter at first, and the new joints will look fresh until they weather too. That contrast softens as rain and sun work on the new material.
We set clear expectations for your Oviedo home before work starts: what the repair will look like on day one and what changes as it weathers. Where appearance matters most, such as the street-facing side, we choose the closest brick we can find for that face.
