Seasonal

After a Spring Storm: What to Check on Brick and Stone

The damage that matters after a spring storm is rarely the kind you can see from the driveway. It is water that got somewhere it does not normally go.

Impact is the obvious part, and the smaller part

After a rough night people walk out looking for a limb through the wall. That does happen, and it is easy to spot. It is also the least common way a storm hurts masonry.

March through May is severe weather season in Middle Tennessee, and Rutherford County sits in the middle of it. Tornado warnings, straight line wind and hail all belong to those weeks. What does the most masonry damage across the season, though, is the plainest ingredient in it: rain driven sideways at a wall for an hour at a time. Ordinary rain falls on a roof. Storm rain is pushed into vertical surfaces under pressure, into joints and around openings, from directions the wall never sees the rest of the year.

That damage is invisible from the yard. It shows up as a stain on a ceiling three weeks later.

Brick is a screen, not a raincoat

This surprises most homeowners, and it explains everything else in this post. Brick veneer is not waterproof and was never meant to be. Water passes through brick and mortar in heavy weather by design.

What keeps the house dry is the cavity behind the veneer. Water runs down the back of the brick, lands on flashing, and exits through the weep holes at the bottom. The system assumes water gets in and gives it a way back out.

So a leak after a storm almost never means the brick failed. It means the drainage path failed. Blocked weeps, mortar droppings sitting on flashing, flashing that was never lapped correctly, or an open joint above a window that lets water bypass the path entirely.

Check inside while the wall is still wet

There is a window of roughly a day where evidence is visible, and after that a small leak dries and hides until the next storm. Go inside first, before you go out.

Work the walls that took the wind. In our storms that is usually the south and west faces, though a specific cell can come from anywhere. Look where masonry meets something else, because that is where paths open.

• Ceiling and wall corners on the windward elevations
• Window sills and the wall under them, felt with a hand
• Baseboards, and carpet edges along exterior walls
• The inside of closets on exterior walls, where nobody looks
• The chimney chase, in the attic as well as the room below
• Basement or crawlspace block walls, for fresh damp streaks

Then the walk outside

Do the outside lap in daylight with your phone in hand. You are looking for two things: what moved, and what is now blocking water from leaving.

Gutters do more damage after storms than wind does. A clogged gutter overflows down one section of wall, and a downspout extension that got knocked aside dumps hundreds of gallons at a single corner. Both soak masonry that then has to get through next winter.

That last point carries more weight than it usually gets, because it is the piece of storm season people defer. Brick that goes into December still holding April water is the brick that spalls, and the reason is the way winter behaves in this region. It does not freeze once and stay there. It drops under freezing overnight and climbs back through the afternoon, repeatedly from December into February, and every swing works on the same water trapped in the same unit until the face gives up. So drying a wall out after a spring storm is not housekeeping. It decides how much masonry damage you own the following winter.

• Weep holes at the base course, clear of debris and mud splash
• Gutters overflowing, and downspout extensions still in position
• Fresh mortar chips or sand at the bottom of a wall
• Cap stones, pier caps and wall coping shifted or knocked loose
• Flashing at the chimney or roof-wall line lifted or bent
• Retaining walls, which lean after saturation more than during wind

Hail and limb strikes

Hail rarely bothers the face of hard brick, but it does bother the softer parts. Mortar joints, chimney crowns, cast stone caps and limestone sills can all take fresh chips. A crown that already had a hairline crack can open up in one storm.

Look for bright, chalky spots that are lighter than the weathered surface around them. That color difference is the signal that material came off recently.

Limb strikes tend to look worse than they are on a wall and better than they are on a chimney. A chimney is tall, unbraced above the roofline and easy to knock out of alignment. Any limb that hit a chimney is worth a real inspection, even if nothing looks bent.

What to stay away from

Some post-storm masonry is genuinely dangerous, and there is no reason to prove anything by walking up to it. A chimney leaning out of plumb can come down without further warning. So can a freestanding or garden wall with a fresh crack running through it.

The one people underestimate is a saturated retaining wall. Ground that took several inches of rain is heavy, and a wall already at its limit can move days after the weather clears. Keep people and vehicles off the low side and away from the top.

And treat any downed line near masonry as live. Call the utility and stay clear.

Document it, then decide calmly

Photograph everything you found the same day, with something in frame for scale. Note the date of the storm. If you have last year's inspection photographs, you now have a before and after, which is worth more than any description you can write.

Be straight with yourself about what is storm damage and what is deferred maintenance that the storm revealed. Mortar that had been soft for a decade did not fail Tuesday night. Insurers know the difference, and an honest claim goes through more smoothly than a padded one.

Then be patient about the repair and impatient about the water. Storms bring out-of-town crews knocking on doors around Murfreesboro and Smyrna within a day or two, so get a written scope from someone local you can still find in two years. While you wait, cover whatever is letting water in and give the wall a chance to dry out. Taking your time over the decision is fine. Leaving a saturated wall to sit until fall is how a storm in April turns into a masonry bill in December.

Related services: Brick Masonry · Stone Masonry