Remedial builders for apartment and unit blocks.

For a committee, a brick apartment block has one job: stay sound for every lot owner inside it. When the outer brick skin starts pulling away from the structure, it stops doing that job, and the signs arrive slowly: a horizontal crack along a mortar line, a gap opening at a window frame, rust stains in the joints, a wall with a slight belly.

The answer most committees hear is scaffolding and a rebuild, which means a special levy and weeks of bricklayers at every window. Restore the building’s integrity without either: bring in remedial builders who reconnect the walls from the outside. Problem solved.

Why the walls pull away

Most brick apartment blocks are cavity walls: an outer skin of brick tied to the inner structure with metal wall ties. The original ties were galvanised mild steel and lasted 20 to 40 years; moisture in the cavity rusts them, and the outer brick, which takes the rain and expands at a different rate, snaps the rest. The bricks are usually fine. The connection has failed.

The conventional fix

Take the outer wall down and rebuild it with new ties built in, or bolt steel buttresses to the face. Both work. Rebuilding means scaffolding, permits and weeks of bricklayers; buttresses stop the movement but stay on the building for good and don’t reconnect the wall. For a strata building, the levy and the disruption usually cost more than the wall.

How the walls are reconnected

Remedial wall ties are the industry’s name for new ties fitted into a wall that is already standing. Buildfix’s tie is HelicalBar™ T316, in grade 316 marine-grade stainless steel, the same steel used in boat fittings. Each one is driven through a 5 mm pilot hole in the mortar joint, across the cavity and into the inner structure, where its triple-blade helix locks into the masonry. The original ties corroded. These won’t.

Where the walls have cracked, structural crack repair with HelicalBar™ sets stainless bars into the mortar across the crack, so the wall carries its load as one again.

What to expect on the day

Remedial building work on an occupied block, on the day: the crew works from the outside, drilling through the mortar joints with no scaffolding on most walls. Residents come and go as normal and nothing changes inside the units. Each hole is repointed in a colour-matched mortar as the crew moves along, so when they leave there is nothing to see on the face of the brickwork.

If you sit on the committee, manage the building for the owners corporation or look after it day to day, these are the exact jobs Buildfix can help you with. Book a site assessment online and the dates come back by email, or call 1300 854 115 and talk it through with the team first.