Is there an insect or reptile that will chew bricks of your house?
Question:i have a brick house and noticed that in the corners of bricks at different levels of the walls that corners have been chewed off then i sometimes can find a mound of the brick dust does anyone know what is causing this?
Answers:
Mason wasps (we have them in UK) certainly damage brickwork - their name tells you everything. They are hard to eradicate, but your local environmental health department (pest control) might be able to help.
Do you live where it snows?
Was it a cold winter?
Water freezes in the brick and thaws out with the seasons. Over time it causes stress fractures, which causes the type of damage you describe.
Maybe something like that is going on.
I think there are organisms that eat brick. Molds or fungus, I remember mention of them in a biology class I had many years ago, but don't remember the details.
Call a contractor in your area. A building inspector might also have more answers for you.
There is no insect or reptile that could be doing this, their teeth are not as hard as the brick. Sometimes bricks, especially NEW brick, will produce dust when it is weathering. I'm not sure what causes this, perhaps it is something to do with differentially weathering of the brick itself. The mix of the the clay that made the brick could have contained organic matter -like leaves or roots, for example.. something with a high carbon profile that created a weakness in the brick.
When the brick was baked in the oven (bricks are baked in a kiln), the carbon would have burned off.. it could have made an area of weakness in the brick that turned into dust when the brick was fired...a weakness that turned to dust when exposed to weathering...
In any regard, in all likelihood, the bricks are being broken down by some process other than being chewed.
are some type of river rats or what not capable of being around? theyve been known to chew house pipes.
no kidding.
there is an insect in Australia often call a mortar bee it don't attack the bricks but will burrow into weak mortar
don't know if they are in your area
if this is your problem you need to repair your mortar
cheap bricks and normal weathering
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