Brick repair in Clovis CA - mortar matched to your wall and the water fixed first

Most people call us after they notice joints turning to sand, the face of a brick chipping off or a crack running through a chimney, planter or garden wall. The price depends on how many joints and brick need work, how high and easy the wall is to reach, how hard the old mortar is to match and whether a downspout or drainage problem has to be fixed first. That drainage work and the weather set the schedule, since fresh mortar does best out of hard sun and heavy rain. I'll give you a number for your own wall when I come out to look.

First I look at the cracks and tell you honestly whether they need work now, because small mortar cracks don't all need fixing right away. When yours can't wait, we sort out any leaking downspout before we touch the joints, so the new mortar isn't washed out by the same water. Then the old mortar comes out. On older, softer brick, preservation guidance says hand chisels take more work but are the least likely to cause damage, and that a power saw in unskilled hands can break brick edges, so ask any mason how they plan to take your mortar out. I'll tell you how we'll do yours and why. We mix mortar to suit your wall instead of grabbing the strongest bag, pack and shape the joints to match the rest of the wall, swap out brick too damaged to keep and clean up before we leave.

Brick damage often traces back to something else in the yard. If rain is running off your driveway toward the house, driveway pavers laid to slope water away can take that load off your walls. If a slope is pushing on a planter or garden wall, retaining wall construction may be the real fix, because patching cracks won't stop the push behind them.

Whether a brick repair needs a permit depends on the job, and the city or county office for your address is the one that decides. When a job needs one, we take care of it with that office, and I'll go over it with you at the estimate. Around Clovis, most of the brick we work on is veneer on house fronts, planters, garden walls and chimneys. A lot of the damage starts low, where sprinklers and downspouts keep the base of the wall wet. We see the same thing on jobs in Old Fig Garden and Sanger. We're based in Clovis and work in the cities around it.

Earthquake guidance for California homeowners says that in parts of the state far from known faults, weaker masonry is what gets damaged in most quakes, and rare ones can still shake hard. That's one more reason not to let worn joints go for years.