Masonry crumbling around town
La Presse looks at the proliferation of safety grilles holding up crumbling masonry around town. And it’s not just institutional buildings. I walked past a triplex this weekend in my neighbourhood that had barriers around the sidewalk because bricks were tumbling from the third floor façade.
Ephraim 09:50 on 2024-03-18 Permalink
And some of them will stay up for YEARS. For one thing, it’s difficult to get a mason, but for another, the city doesn’t seem to charge an increasing rate for the usage of city property to compel the owners to act.
Kate 16:02 on 2024-03-18 Permalink
And just now, around the corner, a new section of scaffolding over the sidewalk. Above, on the second floor of a commercial building, a whole section of brick wall bowing outward away from the substrate. Nothing has fallen yet, but it might only take one heavy vehicle passing to cause havoc.
What’s going on? It’s not like we’ve had any earthquakes.
Joey 16:50 on 2024-03-18 Permalink
Shitty construction + water infiltration will ruin your bricks. Don’t even need any seismic activity.
Ian 18:31 on 2024-03-18 Permalink
Lots of people don’t take of their flashing at the roofline or their soffit & fascia if they have eaves, and next thing you know all the bricks peel away. Whenever you see people with eavestroughs overflowing with icicles you can safely bet they will need brickwork within a few years . Even just painting your bricks and not repainting them regularly can allow ice to get a toehold and that’s a pointing job right there.
Nicholas 20:23 on 2024-03-18 Permalink
Ephraim, love the idea of doubling fines. You get three months to start work (and 12 to finish), say, if not it’s a $1,000 fine doubled monthly, and once you get to the property value you can force sell the house at auction.
Blork 10:25 on 2024-03-19 Permalink
New York City has a big problem with scaffolding everywhere for similar reasons. Buildings taller than six stories are required by law to inspect their facades every five years and to make any repairs that are needed. But building owners sometimes ignore the rules when the fines are less expensive than doing the repairs.
In the meantime they set up scaffolding at ground level so that anything falling off the building hits the scaffolding instead of pedestrians, thus avoiding lawsuits. They call these street-level scaffolding structures “sidewalk sheds” because it’s like walking through a shed at ground level. There are currently around 10,000 of these in the city. The oldest one has been there for 16 years!
Article about it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/style/scaffolding-new-york-city.html
Ephraim 11:15 on 2024-03-19 Permalink
@Nicholas – Consider it a motivation for doing the right thing. The building on the SW corner of St-Denis and des Pins owned by the CSM has been under various scaffolding, netting, wooden stairs and such for most of 10 years.