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CURRENT NEWSLETTER
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Lindemann Chimney Supply sells wholesale only to the chimney and hearth industry.
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 April 2007
White Gold
While efflorescence is usually white, it can be turned into golden profits when you correct your customer's efflorescence related problems.
Now that “Mr. Winter”
will be gone until much later in the year, you'll be getting many calls for exterior tuck pointing and chimney repair.
Efflorescence is a crystalline deposit of powder like water-soluble salt that shows up on the surface of masonry. All masonry materials are susceptible to efflorescence. In a chemical analysis, it takes less than one percent of water-soluble salt to cause efflorescence to appear on the surface. It can even show up on brand new brick and block masonry.
While all brick, block, and mortar contain water-
soluble salts, additional
moisture gets in from rain
(if not treated with a
water repellant), or the construction process.
Even more moisture is present in unlined or deteriorated furnace flues.
During the evaporation process, moisture moves
to the surface. The salts
it carries don't evaporate; instead they accumulate
on the surface until unpleasant looking white deposits appear.
It's easy to just brush most of it away, and the rest disappears when wet. But efflorescence will keep coming back until you do something about the conditions that create it.
First, you must stop the water penetration. This could be as simple as a crack in the chimney crown, or joint failure.
It's also possible that a
new flue liner may need
to be installed to stop the aforementioned water penetration. Remember, the more water that gets
in, the greater the risk
of efflorescence.
You must then clean the surface and make sure all masonry is in good repair. While muriatic acid is cheap and fast, extreme caution must be used. It must be diluted at 12-1
for ordinary masonry, and 15-1 for colored masonry and mortar. Be sure to cover the roof, and any stainless steel trim, or aluminum window trim.
While use of muriatic
acid actually predates World War II, today
we have much more modern proprietary
cleaners like Saver Systems Restore-It, which is a lot more user friendly.
And lastly, keep the water out. Once the surface is clean and dry, apply a breathable, penetrating siloxane- or silane- based water repellant like chimney saver. Chimney Saver's proprietary modified siloxanes are small, water repellant molecules that penetrate deeply into masonry pores, where they chemically
bond to the masonry.
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