Does anyone know what these are in our exterior brickwork?

BellA

Could anyone shed some light on what these circles are in our exterior brickwork? They feel like plastic and run down and along the bottom of our bricks on the side of the house. Do they have a purpose? (I hope this isn’t a silly question, they’re just not great to look at) 

subjecttocontract

They look like masonry nails

Doozergirl

Looks like a cowboy has attempted to inject a damp proof course vertically.  In the process they've ruined every single brick putting the house at risk of, er, damp. 

They've also repointed with what looks like their bare hands and fingers, using mortar with a huge amount of cement in it, hence it's very grey and breaking because it's too brittle.  

Nice work 🙈

Section62

BellA said:

Could anyone shed some light on what these circles are in our exterior brickwork? They feel like plastic and run down and along the bottom of our bricks on the side of the house. Do they have a purpose? (I hope this isn’t a silly question, they’re just not great to look at) 

Probably an attempt at injecting liquid damp proofing.  Which has almost certainly done more harm than good based on the cracks in the bricks.

Rather than filling the holes properly they appear to have stuck plastic plugs in them. (fairly common)

daveyjp

As above.  A poor attempt to try and solve a damp problem where that method isn't the solution.

Just doing a proper pointing job may well have been enough.

BellA

Doozergirl said:

Looks like a cowboy has attempted to inject a damp proof course vertically.  In the process they've ruined every single brick putting the house at risk of, er, damp. 

They've also repointed with what looks like their bare hands and fingers, using mortar with a huge amount of cement in it, hence it's very grey and breaking because it's too brittle.  

Nice work 🙈

Section62 said:

BellA said:

Could anyone shed some light on what these circles are in our exterior brickwork? They feel like plastic and run down and along the bottom of our bricks on the side of the house. Do they have a purpose? (I hope this isn’t a silly question, they’re just not great to look at) 

Probably an attempt at injecting liquid damp proofing.  Which has almost certainly done more harm than good based on the cracks in the bricks.

Rather than filling the holes properly they appear to have stuck plastic plugs in them. (fairly common)

daveyjp said:

As above.  A poor attempt to try and solve a damp problem where that method isn't the solution.

Just doing a proper pointing job may well have been enough.

Thank you for your replies! How would I be able to fix this? 

We bought the house a year ago and I’ve tried googling what they are with no luck so thought I’d try on here. Glad I have now, although haven’t had any damp problems as of yet, I’d prefer to fix it before it becomes a problem.

35har1old

BellA said:

Doozergirl said:

Looks like a cowboy has attempted to inject a damp proof course vertically.  In the process they've ruined every single brick putting the house at risk of, er, damp. 

They've also repointed with what looks like their bare hands and fingers, using mortar with a huge amount of cement in it, hence it's very grey and breaking because it's too brittle.  

Nice work 🙈

Section62 said:

BellA said:

Could anyone shed some light on what these circles are in our exterior brickwork? They feel like plastic and run down and along the bottom of our bricks on the side of the house. Do they have a purpose? (I hope this isn’t a silly question, they’re just not great to look at) 

Probably an attempt at injecting liquid damp proofing.  Which has almost certainly done more harm than good based on the cracks in the bricks.

Rather than filling the holes properly they appear to have stuck plastic plugs in them. (fairly common)

daveyjp said:

As above.  A poor attempt to try and solve a damp problem where that method isn't the solution.

Just doing a proper pointing job may well have been enough.

Thank you for your replies! How would I be able to fix this? 

We bought the house a year ago and I’ve tried googling what they are with no luck so thought I’d try on here. Glad I have now, although haven’t had any damp problems as of yet, I’d prefer to fix it before it becomes a problem.

Is the wall area large are small?
If its a large area the only way of fixing the fractured brick is to remove and replace. Might not be possible to source matching brick
If its a small area plaster the wall

stuart45

The bricks might be Cheshire pre war commons, which you can get hold of.

Mistral001

Those grey round plastic things that look like the heads of roofing nails can be be nothing else but plastic plugs to cover up holes drilled in the wall at injection points in my view. 

Is there an external wall joining the wall at right angles to the wall with the injection plugs such as at a porch? In other words at the line of the plugs or close to the line of the plugs does the wall change from having an external face and an internal face to having two external faces.

Torry_Quine

I have some too. In my case it's for holes drilled to see if there were cavity walls which could be filled with insulation. The walls are solid though.

BellA

Mistral001 said:

Those grey round plastic things that look like the heads of roofing nails can be be nothing else but plastic plugs to cover up holes drilled in the wall at injection points in my view. 

Is there an external wall joining the wall at right angles to the wall with the injection plugs such as at a porch? In other words at the line of the plugs or close to the line of the plugs does the wall change from having an external face and an internal face to having two external faces.

Those plugs there are at the side of our house next to our door, they also go up the wall at the other side of the door and up the wall on the corner of the other side (front of house) as well as along the bottom of the side of the house, 3 bricks up from the bottom.