I moved some furniture today and found crystals and lots of powdered
plaster all over the wall and floor on an outside wall. I think the
water sprinkler used to hit the brick wall on the outside. Is this an
ongoing problem or will keeping water away from the brick solve the
problem? I have a lot of patching to do :-(

Mulan wrote:
I moved some furniture today and found crystals and lots of powdered
plaster all over the wall and floor on an outside wall. I think the
water sprinkler used to hit the brick wall on the outside. Is this an
ongoing problem or will keeping water away from the brick solve the
problem? I have a lot of patching to do :-(


The stuff you're seeing is what's left when water picks up soluble salts
as it moves through the plaster and then leaves the salts on the surface
as it evaporates. This is called bloom or efflorescence. (Not to be
confused with effervescence.)

There are products which will help remove the efflorescence from the
surface of the plaster if dry brushing or wet brushing doesn't work.

Keeping water off the brick will probably solve this unless you have
continued problems with moisture in the wall from other sources.

Mike Paulsen wrote:
Mulan wrote:
I moved some furniture today and found crystals and lots of powdered
plaster all over the wall and floor on an outside wall. I think the
water sprinkler used to hit the brick wall on the outside. Is this an
ongoing problem or will keeping water away from the brick solve the
problem? I have a lot of patching to do :-(


The stuff you're seeing is what's left when water picks up soluble salts
as it moves through the plaster and then leaves the salts on the surface
as it evaporates. This is called bloom or efflorescence. (Not to be
confused with effervescence.)

There are products which will help remove the efflorescence from the
surface of the plaster if dry brushing or wet brushing doesn't work.

Keeping water off the brick will probably solve this unless you have
continued problems with moisture in the wall from other sources.

Greetings,

If you do continue to have a problem consider covering the wall with
FRP or furring it out. Sometimes this is the easiest way.

Hope this helps,
William Deans