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Originally Posted by dcmac
Super helpful - thanks!
I think the damage may be coming through from the exterior side... the backyard grass/dirt comes right up against the bottom of the wall and it's an irrigated yard so I'm sure there's a ton of moisture hitting the exterior wall. I may have to look at digging it out and making sure there's no direct earth to wall contact.
Appreciate it!
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I wouldn't assume the damage is being done by what's happening on the outside. It's counter-intuitive, really. If that light hazy white stuff I'm seeing in your photo is road salt, that's a big contributor. Taste it and find out (yes, really). And the freeze-thaw cycles are the real killer. Your car comes in full of sloppy car-boogers that are loaded with salt. The boogers melt and the salty slop gets splashed or wicked up onto the wall, and then permeates the bricks any time it's above freezing. Then when it freezes, the water expands and causes the disintegration. It's the same thing that ruins our roads.
The wetness on the outside is only during the warm months, right? It's not helping, and I would definitely try to keep water off the bricks to prevent mold & mildew staining, but I doubt that it's the real cause of the spalling on the inside.
Salt is destructive to masonry, and so are freeze-thaw cycles. I was just over at my mom's yesterday, swapping her summer tires onto her car. I'm weighing options for restoring the concrete floor in her garage. You can see the outline of where all the cars have been parked; the concrete is horribly pitted in those rectangles, and in great shape everywhere else. I'll be skim-coating it with acrylic concrete patch and then epoxy coating it this summer.