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Why does nobody talk about foundation settlement around brick veneer
I've been laying brick for about 8 years now and I keep seeing the same mistake on jobs. Guys will tie the brick veneer directly to the foundation wall without any real expansion joints. Then 2 or 3 years later the veneer starts cracking at the corners because the foundation settles different than the brick. I just finished a repair job in Raleigh where a house built in 2021 had cracks big enough to stick a quarter in. The original crew used rigid ties every 16 inches and no soft joints near the grade beam. Anybody else run into this or do I just work in a weird area with bad soil?
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the_hugo2mo ago
Yeah, I had a buddy in Charlotte who did brick work for a while, and he said the same thing about those rigid ties cracking everything up. He had this one job where the bricks were basically floating after a couple years because the foundation sunk a little and the veneer just couldn't move with it.
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paulschmidt17d ago
...and that's the thing about brick veneer, people don't realize it's basically just a heavy raincoat for the house. It's not structural at all. Once the foundation shifts even a little, it's like the whole thing is just hanging there with no real support. I remember my neighbor had a similar issue with his porch steps... the bricks started spalling after a few wet winters and he just kept patching them with mortar instead of fixing the real problem underneath. Ended up having to tear the whole thing out and start over. Cost him double what it would've been if he'd just dealt with the drainage and settlement first.
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