Brick Repairs & Repointing in Adelaide

Two problems account for most brick repairs in Adelaide. The first is cracking: stepped cracks that follow the mortar joints, straight cracks through the bricks themselves, or separation at corners and around windows and doors. Fine cracking is often just the mortar reaching the end of its life, but wider or moving cracks can point to footing movement or a failed lintel, so they need assessing before anyone simply fills them. The second is spalling, where the hard outer face of a brick flakes, blisters, or crumbles away. Spalling usually comes from moisture getting into the brick, and on older homes it is very often the result of past repointing done in a hard cement mortar, which is a problem we come back to below.

We repair cracked and spalled brickwork by cutting out the failed bricks, sourcing matching replacements, and rebuilding the section back into the existing bond. Where a crack is structural we deal with the cause, not just the surface, so it does not come straight back a season later.

Repointing is the process of raking out old, worn, or cracked mortar joints and replacing them with fresh mortar. Done properly it keeps water out of the wall, strengthens the brickwork, and lifts the whole look of the house. The single most important decision on a repointing job is the mortar itself. A lot of Adelaide's character homes, the federation and interwar brickwork right through the inner suburbs, were built with soft handmade or pressed brick laid in a lime-based mortar. When that brickwork is repointed with a hard modern cement mix, the cement ends up stronger than the brick, so instead of the mortar wearing over time the brick face spalls and blows out. We match the mortar to the brick, using lime-compatible mixes on heritage work, so the repointing protects the brick rather than slowly destroying it.

Tuckpointing is the fine finish you see on many older Adelaide facades: a crisp contrasting fillet set into the joint to give a uniform, decorative line. It is a specialist finish that restores the original character of period brickwork, and we can match it where a facade has been damaged or previously repointed poorly.

Every wall is different, so the only accurate number is a free quote, but here is honest guidance on how the pricing works. Repointing is usually charged by the square metre of wall face, and the rate moves with a few things: how much old mortar has to be raked out by hand, whether the mortar needs matching to soft heritage brick, and access. Heritage work and tuckpointing sit at the higher end because they are slower and more specialised, and walls above single storey or behind tight side-return access cost more again because of scaffolding and time.

Small patch repairs are often quoted as a minimum half-day or day rate rather than by area, because the setup is much the same whether it is one square metre or five. Replacing individual bricks is usually priced by the number of bricks and how hard they are to match. We will always give you the honest scope: whether a wall genuinely needs full repointing or just a few targeted sections, so you are not paying to have work done that does not need doing.