Mortar Joints

One of the things that you have to pick in your external selections apart from bricks, gutters, down pipes, roof, fascia and barge trim is your mortar joint. Before we started this process I had no idea there were more than two (flush and the one that isn’t flush like what we have on our current home…that was obviously the technical term). These are your usual suspects:

Hubby being of a trade background wanted ironed joints because he said they are what the tradies recommend, this upon undertaking some research is correct. Boral, Austral, PGH and a number of overseas sites from the UK and USA state that this is because the rounded tool that they use pushes the mortar in to create a tighter seal and better compacts the mortar. (Its also what the Americans call a concave join) the numerous pages of detail also states that it’s the best joint to have to guard against moisture when it rains:

The brick companies also recommend an ironed joint in areas of high salinity like on the coast and I saw on Homeone that there was an article where they recommend this joint in bushfire prone areas like us. Anyway, luckily, (because hubby was adamant this is what he wanted) from an aesthetic point of view I actually like this joint with the bricks we choose as the flush joint although very modern and more beautiful with a smoother brick like ours, made the bricks appear more brown (maybe because the mortar contrast was more obvious) and where the joints were ironed or raked the bricks looked more grey especially in the daylight which is what we wanted in order to compliment the grey render colours we choose. (I recommend placing all your samples like bricks, render, colorbond in different lights to see what they look like as they change!) The Austral specs sheet I found on mortar actually said something along the lines of the ironed joints bring out the character of the bricks…whatever that means!