Terms

These terms cover the use of this website and what the introduction it arranges is and is not. They take two minutes to read and save an argument later.

What this site does

Masonry Contractors Syracuse arranges introductions between homeowners in Syracuse and the surrounding Onondaga County area and independent contractors who do masonry work. We do not cut, rake, point, rebuild or replace masonry ourselves. We hold no plant, we employ no crew, and we are not a party to the work. When you send a request we read it, work out which of the five jobs on this site it belongs to, and pass it to a licensed, insured contractor who covers your town. They look at the wall, they price it, they schedule it and they invoice you.

There is no New York State masonry license, and what to ask for instead

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 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 nobody working here holds a state masonry license, nothing on this site should be read as saying otherwise, and a contractor who claims one is a reason to look harder. What you can genuinely check is a certificate of insurance naming you, workers compensation and disability coverage or a valid exemption, and a written contract. Where this site says licensed and insured, it means the contractor who takes the job carries what their trade and their jurisdiction require, and it is theirs to evidence rather than ours.

Your contract is with the contractor, and New York says what has to be in it

Whatever is agreed for the work is agreed between you and the contractor. General Business Law section 771 requires every home improvement contract to be evidenced by a writing signed by all the parties, carrying the contractor's name, address and telephone number, the approximate start and substantial completion dates, a description of the work to be performed and the materials to be provided including make, model number or other identifying information, the agreed price, a mechanic's lien notice, a statement of how money paid before completion is held, and a notice that you may cancel until midnight of the third business day after signing. The mortar belongs in that description. Asking for the type, the mix proportions and the joint depth in writing is asking for a description the statute already requires to be complete. We are not a party to that contract and can neither alter it nor enforce it for you.

Quotes, prices, and why height moves the number

Every price on a masonry job comes from the contractor, not from us. Nothing on this site is a price, an offer to carry out work, or a prediction of what a job will cost. Two quotes for the same wall can differ by thousands without either being dishonest, and the reasons are structural rather than sly. A national cost guide puts labor at roughly 80 to 90 percent of a repointing job, with the mortar itself 10 to 20 percent, so the number is hours and access rather than materials. OSHA requires each worker on a scaffold more than ten feet above a lower level to be protected from falling, so above roughly that height the job needs a scaffold erected, inspected and fitted with fall protection before a single joint is cut, and none of that shows in the finished wall. Preservation Brief 2 adds that quantity moves the unit price: one linear foot of pointing in five separate spots costs more than five contiguous feet.

Permits, and who is responsible for getting them

Permits are a matter between the contractor and the property owner, and this site does not obtain them. New York's regulation 19 NYCRR 1203.2 requires every city, village, town and county responsible for enforcing the Uniform Code to establish its own code enforcement program, and 19 NYCRR 1203.3 lets a municipality exempt repairs from the permit requirement where its own program says so and where the work does not affect fire and life safety, including the structural system and the means of egress. The consequence is that repointing may need nothing in one town here and a permit in the next, and the same regulation says plainly that an exemption from needing a permit is not authorization to do work in violation of the codes. Ask the municipality, or ask the contractor to.

Historic districts, and painted brick built before 1978

Two rules can decide the sequence of a job before anyone touches a joint. The City of Syracuse runs a Landmark Preservation Board, and the city states that any exterior alteration to a designated site or to a property inside a preservation district must be reviewed by that board through a Certificate of Appropriateness. The National Park Service's National Register records list nineteen districts inside the city line, and more in the villages. Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency's Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule governs paid work that disturbs painted surfaces in housing built before 1978. Exterior work disturbing 20 square feet or less of painted surface falls outside a regulated renovation under 40 CFR 745.83; above that, 40 CFR 745.85 forbids grinding, power planing, needle guns, abrasive blasting and sandblasting of painted surfaces unless the machine carries a shroud or containment and a HEPA vacuum collecting dust at the point of generation. Whether either applies is a question about your property, and it is the contractor's obligation to work within them.

The standards and the figures quoted on this site

Every factual claim on these pages carries its source beside it, and those sources are published documents from the National Park Service, the Brick Industry Association reporting ASTM C270, OSHA, the Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA, the US Census Bureau, New York State and the City of Syracuse. They are quoted so that you can check them. They describe what published guidance and regulation say; they are not a promise about your particular wall. A specification is not an outcome: masonry is a variable material in a hard climate, and the right mortar improves the odds rather than settling them. Nothing here is engineering advice for your property, and a wall that has moved, a chimney out of plumb, a lintel that has lost section, or masonry carrying a load is a question for a design professional.

Limits

This site is provided as it is. We take reasonable care that what is written here is accurate and current, and every sourced fact carries the date it was checked, but published guidance, municipal programs and regulation change, and we are not liable for a decision taken on the strength of a page that has since been superseded. We are not liable for the work, the workmanship, the timekeeping, the pricing or the conduct of any contractor introduced through this site, and nothing here creates a warranty of any kind on their behalf. Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, it is not excluded.

Using this site

Use the form to ask about masonry work on a property. Do not submit somebody else's details as your own, do not use the form to send automated or commercial messages, and do not scrape, copy or republish the writing and the compiled source material on these pages. The wording, the layout and the assembled research here are ours.

Changes

These terms and the privacy policy are updated when what the site does changes, in the same edit as the thing that caused the change rather than at some later date. The version on the site is the current one.