Home DIY

Remember my cellar?

So. I need to do something about the walls of my cellar. They're kind of crumbly. There's nothing wrong with the brick (they're not perfect, but they're fine). However, being 147 years old, and pointed with the original lime mortar, I'm fairly sure they need re-pointing. Over the years the mortar has done what it's meant to do (be sacrificed to protect the brick) and is very crumbly in some spots, and pretty much gone in others.

This would all be fine and simple: repoint it with more lime mortar. But quite a lot of it has what can only be described as a weird coating on it:

This coating in places has acquired a strange white 'bloom', which you can scrape off with your fingers.

I think originally the whole thing was coated with this. I don't know what it is, but I suspect the best option is to clean it off (sandblaster?) before it's repointed.

Some of it's quite thick, some quite thin, and you can see that the bricks underneath are red, which I think would look quite good if it was possible to successfully clean them up and neatly repoint. But I'm a bit worried taking this layer off might take the front face of the brick off with it.

Is that a rational fear? Does anyone know what it is?

This is what it looks like where it's less thick and the mortar has eroded more:

Any ideas?

Dust mask, Tyvek suit, wire brush.
Knock yourself out....
It's unlikely you'll get the bricks clean enough without blasting to leave unpainted.
The cellar would never have had pointing as that's for the exteriors of buildings.
Using a trad natural lime wash or a micro-porous paint would probably be a good idea as it will let the wall breath out moisture, which it obviously has been doing quite happily for years hence the salt deposits.

Have fun

I would hire someone -and I'm a builder.

I finally got around to getting a builder to have a look earlier this week with a view to getting the repointing etc. done.

He's (very) local and comes recommended - we know a couple who have used him and are happy with his work and he's repointed a whole house down the road. A few things I'm not sure about though...

One is that he thinks it would be a waste of time/money to use lime mortar - it would create issues due to the confined space of the cellar and cost a lot more. He reckons the original cement was portland, which having done some cursory googling seems feasible as it was invented in England in 1824, and our house is 1860s. He's confident nothing will crack down the road and has pointed out that as he only does local work he's got his reputation to worry about - if it did crack it wouldn't do his reputation locally much good. So, I think I'm ok with that.

He also thinks sealing the bricks with brick seal once the repointing is done would be a good idea. My only question with this is whether the walls will be able to breath with this stuff on? Everyone seems to think this is important. As I understand it he is suggesting using this to keep moisture out of the cellar?

Finally apparently our water pipe (in the top photo) is lead and this is bad (it was outlawed in 1970). This should really have been removed when they converted our building into two flats in '86, but they didn't do it.

He reckons long term it's not good to have all our water going through a lead pipe and I should let him replace it with a plastic one, but google says lead pipes in hard water areas will have a limescale coating that will stop us getting poisoned. I'm inclined to replace it anyway as otherwise he'll have to repoint around it, but any thoughts?