On 3/24/2010 7:42 AM, John Leeke wrote:
>> Good mortar costs more.
>
> How can we tell the good mortar that does not contribute to 
> efflorescence from the bad mortar that does?
John,

Note that my other response was related to cost... estimating.

I once had to explain to an architect that we were looking at limestone 
and not concrete (they specified concrete patching materials and 
methods). Nose to stone. Sort of the same problem. They wanted to know 
how I could tell. One either knows what they are looking at or one does not.

Simply looking at the mortar in place one more than likely cannot tell 
unless there is efflorescence present. What one can know is how to try 
to avoid it, which comes from experience and to care about it. 
Considering how much information we are bombarded with on a daily basis 
it seems plausible to me that not very many property owners and/or 
new-build architects would have any clue about masonry, mortar and water 
or that they would care to know those sorts of details. When bombarded 
with information the tendency is to reach toward the specialist.

A wall built in cold weather can look astoundingly good until the 
following summer when it bleeds efflorescence... and one may think it 
would wait to bleed until after it has been paid for. I have done a good 
bit of winter masonry in the past.

One of the earliest 'masonry problems' I was asked to solve when I first 
got started building fireplaces was when our neighbor across the street 
asked me why his then not very old chimney had white stuff on it. Alfred 
was long dead before I got around to figuring it out.

The neatest efflorescence I have ever seen was on the interior of the 
brick work of the Montauk Lighthouse. It was like fine hair that came 
out from the wall more than an inch. Here it was certainly water 
penetration into the masonry and evaporation in the relatively dryer air 
on the interior. Touch it and it would vanish into a fall of white dust. 
I wanted to preserve it for future generations.

][<en

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