Retaining Walls, Brick Steps and Foundation Masonry at Ground Level

If it has leaned, no, and this is the most expensive mistake made at ground level. Pointing the joints a moving wall has opened restores the appearance and changes nothing about the cause. Two things usually made it move. Under it: the code standard for a masonry footing is natural undisturbed earth or engineered fill below frost depth, and anything bearing shallower gets lifted, which here means roughly 84 crossings of freezing in a normal year rather than one long freeze. Behind it: saturated soil weighs far more than drained soil, and Syracuse delivers a normal 38.47 inches of precipitation across 89.7 wet days plus 123.8 inches of snow to melt. So the question a good quote answers is what changes below and behind the wall. If the answer is only how the face will look, you are buying the same lean back.

Use the free test before you spend anything. The National Park Service advises monitoring a crack over a period of time to see whether it is active: mark the ends with a pencil, write the date beside it, and look again after a season change. Thermal cracks are normally cyclical, opening wider in cold weather and narrowing in hot, and the published advice is that an active crack should be sealed with a flexible sealant while an inactive crack may simply be pointed. A crack that only ever gets wider is neither of those and that is the one to act on. The shape tells you which trade as well. A crack that steps diagonally down from the top corner of a window or door is a lintel question. One running up from the ground with a lean or a bulge beside it is a movement question, and those are priced completely differently.

Because they are horizontal and the walls are not. Snow lands on treads and caps instead of running off them, and a normal year here brings 123.8 inches of it with 92 inches falling between December and February. It melts by day and refreezes by night, and it is the crossing of freezing rather than the depth of the cold that works a joint apart: the daily low here reaches freezing on 129.5 days of a normal year while the daily high stays below it on only 45.7. That is why treads, coping, sills and wall caps fail before the masonry underneath them, and why a tread or a cap that throws water clear of the face is worth more than repointing the same joint every few years. If your steps are poured concrete rather than units set in mortar, they are flatwork and a different specification, so establish which you have before taking a quote.

Usually, and which office depends on your address. New York requires every city, village, town and county responsible for administering the Uniform Code to establish its own enforcement program by local law, so there is no single counter for this metro: it is your village if the house sits inside an incorporated village and your town otherwise. A municipality may exempt repairs from needing a permit where it wrote that exemption into its own program, but the exemption cannot reach work that has an impact on any part of the structural system, and a wall retaining soil is holding something up. The Town of DeWitt, for one, names alterations, additions, fences and other improvements to property on its permit page, and will not take an application without workers compensation and disability proof or a signed Certificate of Attestation of Exemption. That is the same paperwork worth asking any contractor for anyway, so the permit process is doing you a favor.

Often not, and the cheap causes are worth ruling out first. Preservation Brief 1's finding is that water penetration to the interior of a masonry building is seldom due to porous masonry and almost always results from poor or deferred maintenance, naming leaking roofs, clogged or deteriorated gutters and downspouts, missing mortar, and cracks and open joints around door and window openings. Add two more at ground level: a downspout discharging against the wall, and grade that has crept up over the flashing line. New York's code requires flashing beneath the first course of masonry above finished ground level and weepholes at no more than 33 inches on center immediately above it, so a wall built correctly has a drainage path that a raised grade or a filled joint can quietly take away. Check those before paying for masonry, and be careful of any coating sold as the answer, because the same guidance warns that a repellent coating can leave liquid water trapped behind it.

Nobody at state level, and knowing that protects you. New York's Department of State states that New York State does not license home improvement contractors and that licensing is done by some counties and local municipalities, naming New York City, the City of Buffalo and the counties of Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Putnam and Rockland. Onondaga County and the City of Syracuse are not among them. So a claim of a New York State masonry license should make you look harder rather than relax. What you can actually verify is more useful: a certificate of insurance naming you, workers compensation and disability coverage or a valid exemption, and a written contract. General Business Law 771 requires that contract to be in writing and signed, with the work and materials described, the start and completion dates, the mechanic's lien notice, the escrow or bond notice, a schedule of progress payments where applicable, the three business day cancellation right and the contractor's property and casualty insurance disclosure including the insurer's contact information.