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I may have made a stupid mistake.

Last year I found some wasps in the weep hole in my brick veneer house. The problem is that I didn't know what a weep hole was at the time, so I killed the wasps, filled the hole with Brickfix, and filled several others around the house to prevent the same thing from happening.

Today I learned what a weep hole is and realized that I filled a bunch of them in. I'm guessing I should go and clear them out, but I have no idea if I actually can get the Brickfix out.

How critical is it to clear these out? Will a chisel and hammer be sufficient, or is there a faster/easier way?

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  • A smaller radius disk style cutter will do nicely for opening up mortar slots. Admittedly this works better for horizontal lines than vertical as the vertical are so short. careful not to cut the brick. After you wind up opening up the weep holes, you may want to invest in some sort of weep hole cover that allows for drainage and breathing while keeping out rodents and bugs.
    – Forward Ed
    May 11 at 20:08
  • Great ideas! Thank you.
    – RedSpikeyThing
    May 12 at 21:30

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Weep holes: No structure is 100% waterproof, and weep holes allow both water and moist air to escape the structure, so that it doesn't start going mouldy or rotting (which would cause problems over time).

So yeah, it's important to keep them open. You should also inspect them every couple of years, see if they're not blocked.

Clearing them out: I would use a combination of chisel and stone drill, so you don't chip the adjacent bricks and make the slits look ugly.

You can start neatly tapping out the first 5mm or so with the chisel so that the drill has a 'valley' to start in. Use increasing widths of drill until you've removed the material. Depending on the strength of Brickfix (which I'm not familiar with) and the depth of the plugs you created, you may need a hammer drill for the job.

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  • 3
    Ugh thanks. Chiseling a valley to start is a good idea. Brickfix is basically watery mortar that comes in a cartridge for caulking guns. Hopefully I did a bad job filling them in so it's easier to remove...
    – RedSpikeyThing
    May 11 at 7:13
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    You could also use a masonry drill of the right size or slightly smaller as your chisel. Mortar is often so much softer than brick that you can make good progress while being really quite gentle, and turn off hammer mode on your drill
    – Chris H
    May 11 at 15:46

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