Brick-Safe Cleaning for Brick City

Why Huber Heights Is a Special Case

Charles Huber built this town out of brick starting in 1956 — thousands of brick ranches, block after block, which is where the "largest community of brick homes in America" claim comes from. It also means most of this town's exterior cleaning is a masonry job, and masonry has rules.

Seventy-year-old mortar is the weak link, not the brick

Fired brick is hard. The mortar between it isn't — and after seven decades of Ohio freeze-thaw cycles, the outer face of those joints has softened. Put a 3,000 PSI wand on it and you will visibly excavate the joint, leaving a shadow line that never goes away, plus a path for water to get behind the wall. Once water is behind brick it has nowhere to drain, and you get spalling, interior staining and a much bigger bill.

Everything we do on Huber brick runs under about 500 PSI with a masonry-safe detergent doing the actual cleaning. It takes longer. It is the only correct way.

Efflorescence isn't dirt

The white bloom you see on brick — especially near grade, around downspout splash zones and under windows — is efflorescence: dissolved salts pulled to the surface by moisture inside the wall and left behind when it evaporates. Detergent won't touch it and pressure will only damage the joint. It takes a specific masonry cleaner, and it's worth knowing that its presence means moisture is entering somewhere. We'll show you where we think it's getting in.

Carports, covered walks and the north-facing garage side

The mid-century Huber layouts have a lot of covered slab — carports, breezeways, deep covered entries. Those never get rinsed by rain, so they hold decades of settled dust and oil. They're the single most dramatic before-and-after on most of these properties, and cheap to add to a driveway job.