The summary up top
I got a call from a condo board last spring after a chunk of brick face landed on the walkway by their front entrance. Nobody was hurt, but they wanted to know how a brick just “lets go” out of nowhere. The honest answer is that it doesn’t — not suddenly. By the time a face pops off and hits the sidewalk, that wall has been failing quietly for years. Masonry is the slowest-moving problem on a building and the easiest to walk past without seeing. This one’s for property managers and condo boards who pass their own brick every day. I’ll walk through the four things our winters do to a masonry wall, what each one looks like early, and why late spring into summer is the only sensible window to fix any of it.
1. The mortar goes before the brick does — and that’s by design
The first thing I told the board, standing at that wall with them: the mortar is supposed to fail before the brick. It’s mixed softer on purpose, so that when the wall moves — and every wall moves — the joints crack and crumble instead of the brick. That’s a feature, not a defect. The problem is that nobody budgets for the feature.
In Ottawa we get somewhere between 30 and 60 freeze-thaw cycles a year. Every cycle, water that’s worked into a hairline joint expands about 9 percent as it freezes and levers the joint open a little wider. Repeat that for two decades and the mortar that was once flush with the brick is recessed a quarter-inch and soft enough that I can dig it out with a key — which is exactly what I did right under the spot where their brick had come down.
Most brick buildings need repointing — raking out the old mortar and packing in fresh — somewhere around the 25-to-30-year mark, and again roughly every 25 years after. If your building went up in the ’90s and has never been touched, you’re due.
What to look at: Run a key or a flat screwdriver along a mortar joint at ground level. If it powders, gouges, or falls out in chunks, that joint stopped holding water out a while ago.
2. Spalling brick means water already got in and froze
Spalling is when the face of a brick flakes, pops, or sheets off, leaving a rougher, lighter-coloured interior exposed. Everyone assumes it means the brick was cheap. It almost never does. Spalling is what happens when water gets behind or into the brick, freezes, and pushes the face off from the inside — which is exactly what put that piece on the condo’s walkway.
Once a brick face is gone, the soft interior soaks up water far faster than the original fired surface ever did. So it accelerates — one popped brick wets its neighbours, and a small patch becomes a column within a few winters.
The other cause I run into is a wall that got sandblasted or pressure-washed too aggressively years ago. Stripping the hard outer skin off old brick is one of the most expensive “cleanings” a building can have.
What to look at: Walk the wall after a hard rain. Bricks that stay dark and wet long after the rest have dried are holding water — those are the ones that spall next freeze.
3. Step cracks and bulges are the wall telling you something structural
A thin crack that climbs in a diagonal staircase pattern through the mortar joints — up one joint, across, up the next — is a step crack. On its own it can be minor settlement. But when it’s wide enough to slip a dime into, or it’s paired with a section of wall that bulges or leans out from the plane of the rest, the wall is moving in a way it shouldn’t — and that’s when I get more serious on a walkthrough.
Behind a brick veneer are metal ties that anchor the brick back to the structure. They rust and fail over decades, and when enough of them let go, the brick starts to belly outward. That’s no longer a maintenance item — that’s a falling-masonry risk over an entrance or sidewalk, and it’s the kind of thing a city property-standards inspector writes orders about.
What to look at: Sight down the wall from the corner, the way you’d check whether a board is straight. Any visible bow, lean, or bulge in the brick plane needs a professional look before next winter, not after.
4. The fix has a season, and it’s now
Here’s what I told that board about timing. Masonry mortar needs to cure above roughly 5°C, and it needs to get there before it can freeze. Pack a joint in October and catch an early frost, and the mortar never gains strength — it crumbles out by spring and you’ve paid twice. That’s why real repointing and brick replacement in Ottawa runs roughly May through September.
Late spring is also when you can actually see the damage. The snow is gone, the wall has been through its worst, and there’s a full warm-weather runway to get a crew on it. The boards that wait until they spot a problem in November are the ones looking at an emergency price and a tarped wall until April.
What to look at: If repointing or brick repair is anywhere on your reserve study, this is the season to scope and book it — not the one to defer.
What to do if you’re seeing any of this
If your joints are powdering, your brick is flaking, or any part of a wall looks like it’s leaning, get eyes on it while the weather still allows a proper repair. I assess masonry across Ottawa — Kanata, Nepean, Barrhaven, Orleans, Manotick, Stittsville, and Westboro included — and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s a repointing job, a tie-and-rebuild job, or something you can safely watch for another year.
Call us at 613.325.3011 or email yasir@heims.ca to get a wall looked at before the next freeze.
— Yasir, HEIMS Construction
HEIMS Construction is an Ottawa general contractor founded in 2017, serving property managers, condo boards, and institutional owners across the Ottawa area. We carry $10M general liability insurance and are members of BOMA Ottawa, BOMA Canada, the Ottawa Construction Association, and the CCI Eastern Ontario Chapter.