Brick & Stone Cleaning

Here at Structural Repairs, with our non-intrusive approach and systems, we love nothing better than to see old brickwork cleaned and restored to its former glory! The brickies of a long time ago took pride in their work, were masters of their craft, and produced some of the finest buildings in the world at the time. We follow in their footsteps and remove the veil of mortar from their work. Working a metre at a time, we painstaking uncover each section until the entire area of brick has been cleaned. The system we utilise uses a combination of superheated steam, water and soluble particles that are introduced to the area by means of a lance. The operator is covered head to toe in a respiration suit and the feed pipes are connected to as long as we need them and will even include high rise buildings.

In addition, our cleaning system is all about retaining as much of the original material as possible. For instance, a Victorian red brick building that was rendered with a concrete mortar in the seventies is not starting to look tatty. You could replaster the entire building but as much of the seventies’ mortar is falling off, there is not much for it to adhere to. In this case, a common practice is to angle grind grooves into the existing mortar to allow for better adhesion, but this effectively ruins the beautiful red brick underneath for future restoration (although many developers care not – it’s all about swinging and selling it fast).