Hi Tim,
We are currently building a house. The brick went up yesterday and today we went to take another look. Everything looked good last night. When we got there we found that on the side of house, the bricklayer had made a cut in the brick from top to bottom of house. I asked him why. He said the purpose of the cut was to prevent future cracks. None of the other houses on the street have this done and I can't find any information on the Internet concerning cutting the brick as a preventative measure. It looks horrible. Do you know anything about this type of thing and is it common?
Thanks,
Kathy
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Kathy,
This is not a typical building practice in residential construction. That being said, you will see expansion joints in commercial brick walls when the walls are a significant length. But these joints are usually the width of a head joint and carefully constructed. Once the building is complete, foam backing rod is placed in the joint and a very special caulk is carefully injected and then smoothed so that it is almost a perfect match to the mortar both in color and form.
A saw cut line is not acceptable in my opinion, especially if there was never any indication of one on the plan. You must complain vigorously to the builder and possibly walk away from this deal. You have very good grounds to do so.
The real proof is finding the last three to five homes this bricklayer has done and see if there are saw cut lines on similar length / height walls! If not, he has lots of explaining to do. Plus ask him for citations in the literature from the Brick Institute of America where it calls out for expansion joints and exactly how they are to be made. If his method is wrong, you know what to do.
Tim Carter
www.askthebuilder.com
W3ATB