La Paloma’s
The Spanish range of bricks, La Paloma, are increasingly popular but they are difficult to clean. We see lots of jobs where we have to clean 2-4 mm (or more) of sandy mortar from the brickface and arris.
On this job, the bricklayer even water proofed the mortar. How can you get a water soluble chemical like acid to penetrate and clean waterproofed mortar? This is madness! It can take 4-8 days to clean these types of jobs and even longer if you don’t want to damage them. When dirty La Paloma’s left with lots of thick sandy mortar on them are cleaned with acid or the new so called green acids, which are hydrochloric acid urea based, even if they’re hand cleaned, they often go inky black. Some take on an oily appearance and after a while white stains appear.
Generally, the brick pH is down around 3-4 and the mortar is usually so damaged that it’s often soft and very friable. Mortar treated with excessive acid looks pickled like desiccated coral with numerous bugs and holes. This is how water enters the bricks and stains often appear within weeks as the bricks dry and this water comes to the surface bringing the by-products of the acid reactions with it. Hand cleaning actually puts more acid in the bricks and mortar than pressure washing. Contact me if you want to know why.
We fix many of these damaged jobs but it’s costly! Each job is different. In our experience, one bricklayers M3 or 6:1:1 mortar is never the same as another’s. They all have different mixes and additives so they all clean differently. Our job is to figure out what they did and then fix them without damaging the job even more. This is usually after the acid cleaner has been a few times and stops returning builders calls. We usually can get them over the line but it’s not easy, simple nor is it cheap. Surely it is best to convince the bricklayers not to leave any fresh thick sandy mortar on the brick-face or the arris and not to use plasticisers, waterproofers and lime replacement additives. This will make the jobs easy to clean and your jobs will end up being much cheaper and problem free.
If you are considering a Spanish brick job, call us as we may be able to help prevent the issues discussed above.
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