Building Masonry Restoration

Vital Structures LLC is a masonry restoration engineering consultant in Boston that will investigate and test the stone facade, brick and masonry construction on your building to determine the underlying causes of structural and weatherability issues. We work on many types of structures, including condominiums, apartment buildings, historic structures, offices, universities and colleges, and industrial or commercial buildings. When our engineers inspect your masonry, we’ll search for the cause of the structural issues, not just the symptoms. Our thoroughness in evaluating your masonry often includes structural strengthening inclusive of weatherproofing improvement of your building walls to address the underlying issue to prevent the problem from reoccurring in the future.

We provide building masonry restoration services in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. 

Masonry Structural Strengthening

While unreinforced masonry walls have excellent compressive strength, they often struggle to support lateral loads. These loads cause tension in the walls, which may lead to the development of cracks and wall collapse.

Masonry restoration or strengthening is necessary:

• To prevent structural collapse during a major earthquake.
• To allow an extra load on a building.
• During rehabilitation of the building.
• To improve or increase the wind resistance.

Masonry structural strengthening involves reinforcing on one or both sides of the wall, or internally to prevent collapse. At Vital Structures LLC, we may recommend several methods, including:

• Reinforced Concrete (RC) Jackets: RC jackets are installed on one or both sides of a brick or stone masonry wall. With this method, masonry reinforcement engineers remove plaster from the walls, clean the mortar joints and grout any cracks. Once the engineers insert anchor ties into pre-drilled holes, they apply two layers of concrete with reinforcement mesh.
• Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Strengthening: Deteriorated mortar joints are repaired and damaged brick or block units are replaced prior to surface preparing sections of the wall to an open capillary, roughened surface. FRP grid patterns, carbon fiber wraps or blanketing, or carbon fiber reinforcing rods are placed on the surface or internally to the walls and slab systems.
• Face Anchoring & Grout Anchoring: Ground penetrating radar is often used to better understand existing voids and potential steel reinforcing within a masonry wall. With this data, and after completing a load analysis, grouted anchors are drilled into the walls to tie, connect, reinforce, and increase their load-carrying capability. Face anchoring can also help increase a building’s seismic load resistance when combined with a hybrid augmentation approach.

What We Do

Vital Structures LLC has a thorough engineering process to complete your building’s stone and masonry facade investigation and repair. Our engineers will evaluate your building to identify the causes of masonry failure. Unlike our competitors, we offer destructive and material testing to understand your building’s construction and confidently find the underlying issue. We’ll document our findings so that you can see the state of your building yourself.

When our review is complete, Vital Structures LLC assists our clients with hiring qualified contractors to complete your building masonry repair and restoration. We’ll seek out qualified companies to complete the work, including bid assistance. Our team oversees the masonry restoration work through its completion. Vital Structures®‘ oversight keeps track of the smooth progression and quality work of your project.

Choose Vital Structures LLC as Your Masonry Reinforcement Engineers in New England

Vital Structures LLC offers quality comprehensive building masonry restoration services to give your structures more integrity. Our team strives to get the job done correctly the first time, so you have peace of mind concerning your masonry solutions. Our work is thorough to fully address and remedy your structural issues. You can rely on our many years of experience in masonry engineering.

To schedule your building masonry restoration project, call Vital Structures LLC at 508-279-0655 or complete our online contact form.