Concrete and masonry crack repair

Brick veneer on a North Texas house is a skin, not a structure: it carries its own weight and little else. That makes it a fairly honest indicator: it cracks where the thing behind it moved.

• Stair-step cracks following mortar joints diagonally are the classic differential-settlement signature. The corner they point toward is usually the corner that dropped.
• Vertical cracks at a corner, widening upward, typically mean that corner has rotated away.
• Cracks through the bricks rather than around them indicate more force than mortar-line movement, and worth an engineer's eye.
• Separated lintels above a garage door or wide window, where the steel angle has dropped with the opening beneath it.
• Horizontal cracking is the least common and most serious; it suggests lateral pressure rather than settlement.

Crack width is a poor guide on its own. A stable quarter-inch crack that has not changed in five years matters less than a hairline that has doubled since spring. If you do nothing else, put a dated pencil mark at each end of the crack and photograph it. That costs nothing and turns speculation into evidence.

• Tuckpointing. Cutting out failed mortar and repointing. Matching color and joint profile on weathered brick is genuinely skilled work; poor matching is more visible than the crack was.
• Brick replacement. For cracked-through units. Sourcing matching brick for older Carrollton homes can be the hardest part of the job.
• Lintel repair or replacement. Often involves rust-jacking, where a corroding steel angle expands and lifts the masonry above it. Treating the steel is the actual fix.
• Driveway and walkway sections. Slabjacking to lift a settled section, or replacement where it has cracked badly. A tripping hazard as well as an eyesore.
• Expansion joint renewal. Resealing the joints that let concrete move without cracking. Routine maintenance that is almost universally neglected.