Best way to clean up old bricks

[Jonny69]

What's the best way to clean up old bricks? I've got to do about 80 which I've reclaimed from our old porch wall and we want to reuse them to brick up the window in the outside wall in the house so all the bricks match.

Currently got them stacked outside ready to go. They are 1950s engineered bricks. Some of them are a little damp. Mortar is stuck on pretty well on some of them!

 

[BigBoy]

Hammer and chisel is your best friend, just stick at it, I had to do 300 bricks a little while ago

 

[Jonny69]

Yeah I had a feeling that might be the case. I might have to knock up a quick bad-back-friendly brick chipping bench.

 

[Nedved11]

Just labour intensive unfortunately. A scutching hammer is useful too to get the old mortar off.

 

[bushmins]

You could spend the evening praying for them to be clean by morning.

I was lucky enough to have lime mortar over several hundred bricks, after being outside in the elements for a month or two the mortar just fell off.

 

[Skiddley]

Depends what it is. Lime is easy, sand + cement not so.

Brick acid (muriatic acid) can be applied once you've laid them - the mortar fizzes off. There are some less nasty alternatives.

 

[Mark A]

An SDS should make light work of it.

If you don't have an SDS then make sure your chisel is nice and sharp so you can get under the mortar and hopefully get it off in one big lump. An old wood chisel seems to work well for this I have found.

 

[Jez]

I cleaned up a load of reclaimed stone from an old conservatory we had demolished in order to reuse it for an extension, I just used an sds drill with a wide chisel, it wasn't too bad.