Pro tip: wetting your bricks before laying them in hot weather saved me from a cracked wall

I was laying a garden wall in Phoenix last August and kept getting dry joints that crumbled - soaked a bucket of commons for 15 minutes and they stuck perfect, anyone else do this on summer jobs?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret997d ago

Dry joints in Phoenix, shocking. Next you'll tell me ice melts there. Fifteen minute soak and suddenly you're a brick laying genius.

piper9127d ago

Did you check if that mortar mix was meant for wet bricks in the first place?

alice_kim7d ago

Hold on wait, I gotta call this out - you soaked bricks for fifteen minutes and now you're a brick laying genius? My cousin tried that exact trick on a retaining wall last summer and the whole thing crumbled within a month because the bricks were still too wet in the middle to bond right. I live in Tucson and even here nobody soaks bricks that long unless theyre trying to wash them clean or something. The mortar just slides off and makes a mess if the bricks are dripping wet like that. You must have gotten lucky with the mix you used or something because standard procedure is like a quick rinse or a spray down, not a full bath.