The old brick wall on Elm Street looked solid until the rain came last week.

We were called in to look at a 50-year-old wall that the homeowner said was 'sweating' after storms. The original guys used a hard, dense brick and a mortar mix with almost no lime, so it couldn't flex. After three days of heavy rain, the pressure built up and blew out a whole section of the face, about four feet wide. It was a textbook case of using the wrong materials for our wet climate. What's your go-to mix for a retaining wall that gets a lot of water pressure?

3 comments

3 Comments

davis.iris2mo ago

Ugh, my go-to mix is whatever the old guy at the yard tells me to use. I learned that after a patio I did basically turned back into a sandbox.

robinson.jake2mo ago

Lol same! I used to just wing it with the bagged stuff. That exact sandbox thing happened to me once and now I always ask.

leep891mo ago

Three years ago I had a similar blowout on a wall in Greenfield that was built with standard red brick and no drainage behind it. The homeowner's yard flooded before we even finished digging out the debris. @robinson.jake is absolutely right, you gotta ask the right questions upfront about the materials and the water flow situation.