We have an old house. There is one spot where the brick is leaning away from the house.

We had an engineer come and take a look at the foundation. It's old but it's okay, and isn't the cause of the leaning brick wall problem. He suggested we have a mason come look at the wall. He said he thought it could be stabilized with some sort of anchor (wasn't familiar with what he was talking about but made sense).

I've had two masons come out and both recommended that we tear down the wall and rebuild it.

I'm suspicious. What the engineer described to us was basically re-securing the brick wall to the frame of the house. After some googling, it looks like he was talking about remedial wall ties.

Looks like that type of fix would be a lot faster, easier, and cheaper. But I also don't know what circumstances would prevent remedial wall ties from working or make it a bad idea.

No reason to think the people I'm dealing with are shady, but I'm guessing they default to what they feel is best (and in most cases that's what costs the most). Worth a second opinion.


Any of you handy folks know much about this? I'm always grateful for your wisdom and advice.

Faster, Easier and cheaper, maybe.

As long as you can locate the studs with good reliability and don't hit a water, sewer, or electrical line, it will probably be easier. A mason doesn't want a $5000 job to turn into a $20,000 job if he drills into a water line. Less risk for a mason to tear it down and rebuild since that's what he does all the time and its predictable.

Hadn't thought of that. Makes sense.

Maybe a stupid question, but could the issue be handled from the inside? Tearing things up inside so you avoid the stuff you're talking about, but then you're fixing a hole in the wall instead of tearing down and putting up brick?

Best option is really both. You'll cut out a mortar joint a few feet wide from outside, open up the wall inside to locate studs, transfer to outside so you can set your ties in the studs, then clean up inside and patch the joint outside. I'm not aware of a tie that you could set from inside the wall, plus then you have the difficulty of sealing up your water barrier from the wrong side of the barrier.

This sounds like a pretty far cry from tearing down the entire wall and redoing it...much closer to the solution I envisioned. Kinda surprised two folks are recommending demo/rebuild. Maybe this is just what masons do so they stick to what they know?

Also depends on the amount of deflection from vertical and the amount of brick to be corrected.

The brick wall is pretty brittle in tension. Trying to pull a large wall back to vertical using wall ties may end up causing more issues. Chances are the brick ties are rusting out and your problem may be larger than just the area showing symptoms.

Best long term fix is to reconstruct the wall.

Just pinning it back may last forever, may not.

Just know the risk and make your decision.

This is NOT proper technique, but brick layers can go pretty dang quick. That's why it's often cheaper to just replace masonry than to try to fix it.

Assumptions
Young engineer
Spec/tract.house built ... cheap
Ties inadequate, wall leaned from the get-go
Remdeial masons ALWAYS tear down inferior & rebuild perfectly, oddly this is more permanent & more cash, more SOP, less thinking

http://rb.gy/n37ab
You may not have to find the studs IF you knew the wall assemble, either by Architect wall sections, built by reputatble CUSTOM home builder, ergo well fastened OSB exterior could serve (as it does for cult.stone) to tie into then raquet in many places this masonry wall plumb. You might have to employ more units than mfr recs due to weight, off balance for so long.

Might call
insurance agent for $$$ help
a specialist in desasters that handles insurance, remedial work fast
also a call or email to The Money Pit radio DIY show will illuminate problem/solutions

Thanks for all the input. This board rarely disappoints.

I have one more person coming to take a look. If it's 3/3 recommending we replace it we may go that route. And I'll ask if they considered doing remedial wall ties (and if so, why they wouldn't do it in this case) just to see what they say.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of the masons have never used the remedial wall ties. That's why they suggest tearing it down and rebuilding. It's what they know.