soft wash painted brick · Warm Springs, GA

soft wash painted brick in Warm Springs

In Warm Springs, this comes up on historic cottages, inns, and houses that visitors actually look at. Older stone and brick take a green film in the shade of a tourist street. Older brick in town often has softer mortar than a new subdivision wall. The method gets gentler, not louder.

Guest season and the holidays overlap. The front has to be finished.

Brick holds moisture, which is why the shaded elevation grows a green film and why painted brick mildews in the pores of the paint. A controlled sodium hypochlorite wash kills that film. Pressure high enough to “clean the mortar lines” is pressure high enough to cut the joints. We do not do that.

Painted brick is paint. If the paint is chalking or peeling, a wash reveals the peel. It does not cause fifty years of failure, and it also will not glue the paint back down. We would rather show you a test area than discover the whole wall is holding on by habit.

Efflorescence, the white salt crust, is not mildew and it is not a bleach problem. It is moisture moving through masonry. Washing the crust off without stopping the water is temporary. We will tell you if that is what you are looking at.

The full explanation, without the town attached, is the brick and mortar are not a driveway article. The town does not change the chemistry. It changes the houses, the shade, and the clay.

Brick and masonry cleaning in Warm Springs →