Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Sep 25, 2014 11:42 pm I just had an independent building inspector look through my house which is in post-Lock Up stage. He noticed that throughout the entire brickwork, excess mortar has fallen behind the bricks into the cavity between the brickwork and the flashing, and has hardened with some mortar touching the flashing. The inspector stated that this is in breach of the building standards as water can now travel from the brick across the junk mortar onto my flashing. I wonder if anyone has this problem? To rectify, practically the entire brickwork needs to be pulled down. How serious is this defect and can I not do anything about it since the flashing is water-proof anyway? Re: Mortar in cavity wall 2Sep 28, 2014 8:30 pm while Its not ideal I dont think its as big of a problem as what he is making out. When bricks get saturated water will fall behind it and run down to the flashing. Following this is will come out from the weep holes. As long as the weep holes are free you should be ok. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 3Sep 28, 2014 9:09 pm Due to the excess mortar bridging the cavity and touching the sisalation paper, I read that during wind-driven rain, water can travel from the bricks onto the sisalation paper via the mortar bridge and cause dampness in the timber. In bad cases, water can seep through into the house via the mortar bridge and cause cold spots and even dampness on the walls and floor. I was hoping that someone may have the same problem picked up by their inspector and can share with me ways to solve this without having to pull down the entire brick walls. Was wondering if it was possible to push a long stick into the cavity from the top of the wall to break the mortar! If we remove the roof tiles from the edge of the roof, we can actually peer into the cavity. To make matters worse, the weeps holes are also blocked by lots of junk mortar. Perhaps the bottom 2 rows of bricks can to be removed to clear the weep holes, and also the bits from the mortar bridge which is broken by the stick (if that is even possible). My SS is not helpful and I don't think he has much experience in this. He just said that the project manager is looking into this and he doesn't sound like he is going to do anything about it. This is really making me worried. Pulling down all the bricks so close to completion is going to delay everything. And there may be more problems caused by pulling down and rebricking. But if nothing is done, what are the chances I may have water seeping into the house? The brick-layer was really negligent or plain lazy! And my builder's quality control is really, really bad! Very disappointing since it is a bulk builder which is advertising quality homes! You can hear their advertisements over the radio everyday and it is so not true that they are building quality home. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 4Sep 29, 2014 12:28 am Hi, Sounds to me like your building inspector is trying to justify the $$$ you have paid him. Rule #1: If you have water going into your cavity/over your flashings, you have bigger problems to worry about than it draining away because of a bit of mortar. (Note this is my rule of thumb, haha) You should have weepholes at about -1c (Some builders if laying 2c blocks leave the joint unmudded) Depends on the builder, My recommendation is that every 1m if you have a weep hole that will suffice. Windows with more than 3c of brickwork above you should have weep holes. I would not recommend pulling down brickwork, in my opinion if they haven't drilled weep holes in the areas I've noted above, ask them to do so when you complete your PCI. It's not a hard thing to do, and will probably give you peace of mind. All the best, Re: Mortar in cavity wall 5Sep 29, 2014 8:08 am Unfortunately everyone is an expert in hindsight... the bricks are up and your supervision should have picked this up. You can't pull down the wall and generally cleaning out the cavity is expensive. It is a case of moisture may or may not breach the cavity? mitigating factors to consider -Are the external walls rendered? -Do you have eaves -Are they on the weather side -Is there wind shelter next door (2S house)? etc,etc Designer,Engineer (Civil,Const & Envir),Builder,Concrete & Masonry Contract.Struct Repairs Re: Mortar in cavity wall 6Sep 29, 2014 8:33 am There are no eaves to most part of my house except the front. One side of the house is quite close to the fence and may be slightly protected from wind-driven rain, but this leaves the rest of the house exposed to weather. I found a few interesting articles on how to remove junk from from wall cavities without pulling down the walls. One suggestion was to remove 2 or 3 bricks from the side and stick a drain rod in to break the mortar lumps. A couple of bricks will then need to be removed at the bottom to enable the rubbish to be taken out. Sounds like a time consuming job! Another suggestion was to use roofing lath to rod the cavities and knock off the mortar lumps, which will then be removed by taking out a couple of bricks at the bottom. Not sure if these can be done as my wall cavities may not be wide enough.... I must have gotten the worst and laziest brick-layer around! Not to mention a lousy SS! Re: Mortar in cavity wall 7Sep 29, 2014 8:41 am I read my original post and need to clarify that the mortar is touching my sisalation paper as well. The mortar touching the sisalation wrap can allow water to travel from the external brickwork onto the sisalation paper and into the timber and internal walls, leaving cold and damp spots. The whole purpose of leaving the cavity clear is to have an air barrier between wet external bricks and the inside skin. Anyone else have the same problem? Or is everyone else's brickie more careful than mine? Re: Mortar in cavity wall 8Sep 29, 2014 2:08 pm If the mortar is bridging the entire cavity to the sisalation, then I can see why the BI you hired faulted it. As you can see, you should have hired him during the build. I have no idea how you would get a resolution to this post build, but I would make a demand on the builder right now to have it rectified, so that it cannot be inferred in possible court proceedings later that you accepted the problem. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 9Oct 03, 2014 8:21 pm I checked out the brickwork of other houses which are being built near me, and the wall cavities also contain excess mortar, with lumps touching the sisalation wrap. Lots of bricklayers out there don't bother to follow the Building Standards! Re: Mortar in cavity wall 10Oct 06, 2014 9:52 pm Personally, I would stick to your guns and request rectification. There is a reason it's a standard... It will be more costly for them to rectify if something was to happen down the track. Your inspector should be able to give you some ideas on alternative solutions. Try to keep on good terms with your SS but if they are trying to sweep it under the rug - escalate it. I'm sure they wouldn't accept it on their own home either. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 12Oct 07, 2014 4:27 pm I escalated the matter to the project manager and met him at the site. As expected, he downplayed the defect and said that all houses were built this way. He didn't seem interested to fix this. He did say that he would make sure that the weeping holes were cleared. Frankly speaking, now that the bricks are all up, I don't know how the builder can effectively remove the bridging mortar without tearing down the bricks. Yesterday, I poked around a few houses which were being built in a new estate and could see houses built by at least 3 different volume builders which had the same problem. In some cases, big lumps of mortar were sitting on brick ties and pipes. Looks like damp problems waiting to happen as the cavity walls are no longer functioning as cavities. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 13Oct 07, 2014 8:11 pm Your right, In an ideal build all brickwork would be finished on the inside the same as the face. All the standards call for no bridging mortar,however this is not done as the clients would not pay for the time it took to ensure this finish. There is heaps of ventilation inside a cavity-enough to dry out any migrating dampness in a clump of mortar before it hit the paper.The cavities are still functioning as they should. Your worrying about nothing. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 14Oct 08, 2014 12:06 pm oldchippy All the standards call for no bridging mortar,however this is not done as the clients would not pay for the time it took to ensure this finish. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 15Oct 08, 2014 3:31 pm Sub standard work is often a result of rushing...time is money but it is the buyer who is being short changed. There is no justification for sub standard or non compliant work. 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 16Oct 08, 2014 5:04 pm Right here is my grievance with building inspectors. This is a case of its in black and white so it has to be wrong and the other 20,000 or what ever houses that get built across the eastern states this year are all going to fall down because I can guarantee 99% of them have exactly the same thing. In 35 years, many of which I spent in new home warranty and defects I can honestly say I have never seen a single issue arise because of mortar in the cavity. It's nothing to do with poor supervision or bad workmanship, its practically impossible to build a brick wall and not have mortar drop down the back. And once there how do they propose its cleaned out. Re: Mortar in cavity wall 17Oct 09, 2014 12:49 pm There are many methods which bricklayers can adopt to prevent big chunks of mortar from collecting behind the brick walls. Just google and you will see that it is not rocket science. But bricklayers get away with awful work which breach the Australian standards because clients are ignorant. And if the defects are discovered, the builders tell clients that most houses are simply built that way. Why not just abolish the entire Australian standards then? Hey guys, what’s everyone opinion on James Hardie linea direct fix to frame? 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