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The cracked piers on my 1962 ranch went from nightmare to fine after one fix I almost skipped
So I do tuckpointing and small masonry repair around Dayton, Ohio, and I bought a 1962 ranch house back in March. The front porch piers had these stair-step cracks running up three courses, and my wife wanted to just paint over them and move on. I told her no way, water gets in there and that freeze-thaw in January will pop the whole thing. I pulled the loose brick out in April and the problem was one cracked concrete footing, not the brick at all. I dug down 18 inches, poured a new 12 inch by 12 inch pad with some rebar tied in, and let it cure a full week before I laid anything back. Rebuilt those courses in May with type N mortar since it's an old soft brick, and I checked it again after the first hard freeze in November, not one new crack. Took me about 14 hours total spread over a month and cost me maybe $60 in materials. Anybody else run into footing issues like that where the brick gets blamed for something the pad did?
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robert_cooper28d ago
Feel for you on the cracked footing mess, so much time and worry over something that wasn't even the brick's fault. I've seen that stair-step crack pattern plenty and yeah, it almost always points down to the pad or the soil moving under it. Painting over it like your wife wanted would've just hid the problem until the next freeze and then you're pulling out way more than three courses. Smart move tying rebar into the new pad too, that's what keeps it from walking apart on you. Glad it held through November, that's the real test right there.
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