What does spalling brick look like?

The visual progression usually moves in stages: first, small surface flakes or a slightly rough, pitted texture where the brick used to be smooth. Next come pits and chips deep enough to see with the brick's rougher inner material showing through, often a different color or texture than the fired outer shell. In advanced cases, whole chunks of the brick face are missing, and what's left looks crumbly or eroded rather than solid.

Freeze-thaw is the main driver of this in the Blue Ridge foothills: water soaks into the brick, freezes, expands, and pops the face off from the inside out. Brick that's more absorbent, whether it's older brick, brick used somewhere it takes more direct weather than it was rated for, or brick that's been repointed with mortar harder than the brick itself, spalls faster because the water has nowhere to escape and keeps working on the same weak point. Once that surface shell is gone, the exposed core is even more absorbent than before, so the damage tends to accelerate rather than stay steady from year to year.

How we handle it depends on scope. A handful of spalled bricks, especially ones clustered on a weather-facing wall or chimney side, can often be cut out and replaced individually, matched to the surrounding wall. Widespread spalling across a larger area usually means there's a moisture source, like failed flashing or poor drainage, feeding it, and that gets addressed alongside the brick repair, since replacing the brick without fixing the water source just buys a few more years before it happens again.

• Flaking or peeling on the face of individual bricks
• Small pits or pockmarks across the brick surface
• Chunks of brick missing, exposing a rougher core
• A different color or texture visible where the outer shell has broken off
• Spalling clustered on the side of a wall or chimney that faces the weather