Some bricks on the side of my garage are flaking apart at the bottom. Is that more cosmetic or something that should be repaired?
Answer
Flaking bricks (called spalling) often starts as a cosmetic issue but shouldn’t be ignored. Once the surface of a brick is spalling, moisture gets behind it and causes more damage because it continues to fall apart in layers. Brick repair usually involves replacing the damaged bricks in that area & likely a few other surrounding bricks because although visually the some of the surrounding bricks look ok the vibrations to remove the obvious bad bricks will expose any weakness in the surrounding bricks and cause them to fall apart. Those bottom bricks help support the bricks above them. When those bricks go the wall can become compromised over time which is a more costly repair once it gets to that point. It would be a good idea to get ahead of it & get it taken care of before that happens.
