Why Bricks Fail

Bricks do not fail randomly. They fail for a reason.

When we show up to a building, the cracks are not just damage. They are messages. The facade is speaking. Our job is to listen.

Here is what the building is telling us:

Moisture got where it should not. Modern coatings, poor repairs, clogged weeps—when water gets trapped behind the face, freeze-thaw cycles do the rest. Spalls. Cracks. Erosion.

Hard mortars were forced onto soft bricks. Instead of the joint flexing, the brick absorbs the stress. Corners pop. Faces shear. The wrong mortar breaks the wrong part of the wall.

The wall was forced to fight itself. These buildings were not designed for modern thermal conditions. No movement joints. No tolerance for expansion. When the wall grows in the heat, it has nowhere to go—so it cracks itself open.

None of this is accidental.
Every failure is a diagram of forces—moisture, thermal, structural.

At GKW Restoration, our job starts before a single tool is lifted. We do not guess. We diagnose.

• Where is the moisture coming from?
• Where is the stress concentrating?
• What materials are no longer working together as a system?

We do not just repair cracks. We solve the problem that made them.

This is the work. This is why owners, architects, and engineers trust GKW. Because we do not fix symptoms. We fix buildings.

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The Science of Brick Durability

Brick seems simple. It is anything but.

Walk down any historic street and you will see it. Beautiful rows of brick, standing for over a century. But what makes that possible is not magic. It is material science.

The durability of brick starts long before it is ever laid into a wall. It begins in the clay. In the firing process. In the molecular structure baked into every unit.

Here is what controls whether brick stands for 100 years—or fails in 10:

Silica, alumina, and flux. These are not just ingredients. They govern how the clay body vitrifies. The right balance creates strength. The wrong balance creates weakness.

Porosity. This is the sponge factor. Too porous and the brick drinks in moisture, leading to freeze-thaw damage. Too dense and the wall cannot breathe, trapping moisture inside.

Thermal expansion. Every material expands and contracts. If the brick expands at a different rate than the mortar or backup, the wall starts to fight itself. Cracks form. Units spall.

This is why so many restorations fail. They focus on what the eye can see—color, texture, size—but ignore what the wall actually needs to perform.

At GKW Restoration, matching color is only the beginning. We match performance. We match behavior. We match the science embedded in the original material.

Restoration is not paint and patch. It is physics. It is chemistry. It is the science of longevity.

This is the difference between cosmetic repair and true restoration. And this is the standard GKW brings to every project.

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The Brick Remembers the Weather

Some bricks crumble. Others flake, split, or simply darken.

To the untrained eye, it’s wear and tear.
To us, it’s environmental memory.

Brick absorbs the seasons. It takes in moisture during humid summers. It traps salts during deicing. It freezes from the inside out during winter. And it breaks—quietly—when its pore network can no longer buffer the stress.

At GKW Restoration, we investigate deterioration with precision:

1. Is this efflorescence from internal salts or atmospheric leaching?
2. Has freeze-thaw fatigue eroded the outer skin or penetrated the core?
3. Do we need replacement, consolidation, or just time-sensitive pointing?

We measure porosity, run absorption tests, and study mortar interfaces.
We document. Then we intervene.

Because masonry isn’t static.
It breathes. It reacts. It remembers.

And our job is not just to rebuild—but to restore its rhythm with the environment it lives in.

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