brick faces blowing off

[paul_v]

About 4 years ago we built a retaining garden wall that holds back the garden behind our's which is about 800mm higher. We built using concrete blocks with fascia bricks in front and tied the two layers together with brick ties. Behind the concrete block wall we put drainage gravel in and left gaps every 3 blocks or so to let the water drain out. The wall has a concrete capping on top.

The past two winters we have had some faces blow off the fascia bricks due to frost damage and have since cut these out and replaced them, about 10 in total. We obviously dont want to have to keep doing this but dont want the wall to look a mess.

I thought about sealing the fascia bricks with tompsons water seal to stop the moisture getting in but thought that there will no doubt be moisture coming from behind as well so this probably wouldn't work.

Anybody any ideas how to stop this happening, the wall is about 12m long and 800mm high so rebuilding isn't really an option. The bricks we used are Hanson sherwood buff.

 

[noseall]

The bricks are probably soft and absorbent and obviously not suitable for use in a retaining wall.

Are the blown bricks near the top?

Is there a decent drip on the coping?

 

[paul_v]

thanks for the quick reply,

yeah all the bricks that have blown are in the top two courses

by drip do you mean a grove in the underside of the coping to stop water tracking underneath? If so i dont think they do but i would have to check. The copings do overhang each side of the wall by about 20mm

Bricks were choosen under recomendation from a local builders merchant, obviously he didnt know as much as he liked us to think

Any advice on how to stop this would be much appreciated.

thanks
paul

 

[noseall]

Either replace the top two courses with engineering bricks and/or fit a tile crease coping to the wall instead of the concrete copings.