WEEDS IN CONCRETE:
You can kill weeds growing up through cracks in your concrete by pouring boiling water on them. This is an environmentally friendly way to rid your self of the grasses and vegetation that tries to take over your walks and patios this summer. Just boil a soup pot ¾ full of water (careful this stuff is hot, don't splash it on yourself) and pour it over the plants - they will shrivel before your eyes! Follow that with some table salt and you should be done for the season.

WASP CATCHER
The smell of vinegar will attract wasps. Pour some vinegar in a long-necked bottle and they will crawl in and not be able to get out.

BLISTER BUSTER
Cut down on blisters from using your shovel, rake, hoe or pick by wrapping the handle with ordinary pipe insulation, the padding will help keep your hands free of blisters. Coat the handle with contact cement and then apply the insulation.

Masonry Walls More Than Block & Mortar! 
(Part one of a Trilogy!)

It is time to introduce, Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob is a really good guy, a great uncle and a master mason. With 47 years in the business he should be retired but I can't keep him off the job. Bob lives here with my wife, Chari and our daughter, Moriah and I - he is a gas to have around. He has more funny construction stories than I could write newsletters for - I am still twisting his arm in an attempt to get him to write us some anecdotes about construction, I will either get my way or he will wind up with a chaffed arm - I'll keep you posted.

We were having one of those typical tradesperson conversations about how easy it is for a layperson, when shopping masonry bids or advice, to be misled or misguided. When you think of a wall you picture block (or brick) and mortar joints, right? You envision this wall - small or large - sitting pretty and straight right there where you want it and it looks like it was dropped with a helicopter. And you know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that picture if you hired myself, Uncle Bob or another highly competent and conscientious contractor to design and install this wall...

However...

The world I bid walls in doesn't always work that way. If you are shopping (or may ever shop) for a patio or courtyard wall out of masonry, there are some details about how masonry works that are very common sense when looked at in the proper light and can save you tons (literally) of heartache. Otherwise you are basically at the mercy of your contractor - whether this is good or bad will depend upon their experience and integrity. Given that most people hire out large projects and have to start the shopping process with strangers, I thought maybe I could help you out with some edification.

I have had as many as ten calls per week wanting me to look at walls that are leaning, cracked or splitting. I got one the other morning and I am advising this very sweet lady from the local First Christian Church about how to fix some columns that are splitting and cracking apart. She said the columns hold up a sign - and I didn't need a sign to know what was next: The wood supports were imbedded in the raw masonry column. First mistake! I edified her with a simple law of nature: wood swells when it is wet - anyone with sticky doors during the rainy season knows this, but did you know, that you will not stop that wood from swelling even when you surround it with concrete?

It is hydraulics; capillary action sucks the water into the wood and since you cannot compress water, the water expands the wood, the wood cannot compress, as you might think because it is full of water. This force can be great enough to cause thousands of pounds of pressure on anything it swells against. NOTE: 15# Felt is enough of a cushion if you 'must' embed wood in masonry - but still it is unadvisable.
That was the simple part for me and as automatic in my mind as breathing. My next question was: Are the columns leaning a little to the south? At this point she asks me if I have ever been to church there and I say, "Why?" She says, "Well it sounds to me like you've already seen these columns."

"I have", was my response, even though I had never seen her church or the signs. I knew the columns would be leaning because the mason wasn't a master or he would have never pulled the raw wood in the column trick, so I inferred that he probably didn't allow for any wind sheer pressure that the sign would be receiving.

Tucson is arid. The mountains are to the north of town (Mt. Lemon is over 11k) during the monsoons, the wet air from the Sea of Cortez comes up here from Mexico. The hot air rises in thermals following the terrain to the mountains where it is chilled and during one of our big bad thunderstorms, we will get what are called 'downbursts' of up to 120 MPH and this is most generally from the mountains to the north. So, I knew the columns would be leaning south. Okay, okay, my point...

Footings are the anchor that holds a masonry wall to the earth. That is no big engineering secret. Gravity holds things in place and when something is heavy, it doesn't move very easily - unless something heavier or a force greater than gravity is applied to it. A masonry wall is heavy, so it needs a substantial amount of weight (mass) just to support itself (much less outside influences or pressures).

Fill a masonry wall with concrete and it becomes stronger right? Not necessarily! Provided your footing weighs enough to resist the extra weight added to the wall, it IS stronger - otherwise you can actually cause the wall to be more prone to cracks by filling a wall solid that doesn't have a footing engineered to support the extra weight.

To be continued… more on footings next time and then I will cover wall reinforcement (re-in-for-cement).

Well, until then...

Love, Light & Happy Building!

Rusty Cline,
President: Monument Masonry, Inc.