Pro tip: stop soaking your bricks in the wheelbarrow overnight

I see guys on YouTube and even a few young hands on my crew dunking bricks in a wheelbarrow full of water the night before a job, and I get why it seems smart. But I picked up a pallet of fired clay units last Tuesday that sat out in the rain at the yard, and the mortar just slid right off the faces, no grab at all. On the flip side, a bone dry brick can suck the water straight out of your mix in 30 seconds flat, so there has to be a middle ground. I've started just hosing them down an hour before I lay, letting them dry to damp, and my bond has been way more consistent. What's your rule for wetting brick, or do you skip it and adjust your mortar instead?

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viola_ward22d ago

Damping them down an hour ahead makes way more sense than an overnight soak because the brick only needs to stop pulling water, not hold a swimming pool inside. That wet pallet from the yard proves the point too, since once the face is saturated the mortar has nothing to grab onto and just slides. Your method is basically the middle ground everyone is hunting for, damp enough to keep the mix workable but dry enough that it still bites.

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