Brick is beautiful. Seal it to protect the brick and avoid the costly maintenance of tuckpointing.

Water is brick’s greatest enemy. Sealing your brick protects against water, manages efflorescence and prolongs the life of the material.

Tuckpointing is expensive, so make it last longer. Mortar gets sealed along with the brick, and if you have paid for tuckpointing, you know that prolonging the life of mortar will cut down future maintenance costs.

Brick is one of the sturdiest and most durable building materials, but it is also a porous material. Spray the front of a brick with water and it takes only 20 seconds for the water to seep through to the back side. In effect, a brick is a very heavy sponge.

When it rains or the garden hose hits it, a brick wall soaks up the water. That moisture can transfer to the understructure of your home. When built correctly, a brick veneer allows for this natural occurrence and deters water from transferring to wood.

A by-product of brick’s absorption is efflorescence, the powdery white substance that can appear on brick. Efflorescence happens when water seeping into the brick brings salt to its surface, and once the water evaporates it leaves the salt behind as a fluffy, white deposit.

Mosby Building Arts has discovered a high-performance brick and masonry sealing system that provides internal protection against water. Because it bonds inside, it does not alter the color of your brick or mortar. Our ProTreat system is applied by trained and experienced Mosby technicians, and we stand behind the lasting results.

When you’ve made the investment in brick and mortar, you should protect it. Mosby helps you do that. Call 314.909.1800 or contact us here.

And here’s a bonus feature: brick must be deep cleaned before it can be sealed, so another benefit of a Mosby brick seal is having your brick and mortar deep cleaned. Your brick can look like new and be protected, too.

Painted Brick

A frequent question we get from homeowners is how to restore painted brick back to its natural state, or how to remove paint stains from brick. Click the links below to learn the answers.

Removing Paint Stains From a Brick Wall

Should I Paint My Brick?

Returning Painted Brick to Original Look

Earth Day is a celebration of our desire to protect the planet and live a sensible life. This includes the health and energy efficiency of your home. Here are the most important tips for making your home more energy efficient and green, all year long.

10. Install high efficiency furnace & air conditioning systems
9.  Install a programmable thermostat with setback controls
8.  Upgrade water heater to tankless, electric or solar
7.  Switch to CFL or LED lights and timer controls to conserve energy
6.  Seal air leaks and duct work to stop energy waste
5.  Increase insulation to increase energy savings
4.  Manage indoor air pollutants to protect your health
3.  Control the relative humidity of your home between 30-50%
2.  Upgrade to Energy Star appliances for immediate energy bill savings
1.  Explore tax incentives for energy improvements in your home

Mosby Building Arts will help you with all the energy solutions you want for your home. Our experienced energy team includes:
5 Certified Green Professionals
2 Certified Home Energy Auditors
1 LEED Certified Accredited Professional

The best place to begin exploring energy saving solutions for your home is with a Mosby Home Energy Audit. Our energy auditor will come to your home to test current conditions, identify weak spots and give you a report of problems and solutions. The Mosby repair and energy specialists can make the changes you want, including those listed above.

We have the knowledge, skill and experience to make yours a green and energy efficient home, for Earth Day and for every day! Call 314.909.1800 or contact us here to begin making yours a healthy home.

A home that is built right lasts a lifetime and remodeling your home for green efficiency is the smartest way for you to be earth friendly. Many features of green and sustainable remodeling are simply building it right and making it tight.

Mosby continually seeks education on the smartest building practices that bring the greatest return on investment while keeping you comfortable and worry-free. We have built projects this way for over 60 years. We continuously learn the best practices in order to give you the added value of our earth friendly knowledge and utility cost optimization without any additional costs to you.

In pursuit of higher education that brings you beautiful and green results, we now have five Certified Green Professionals (CGP) on the Mosby team, in addition to our LEED Certified Accredited Professional.

Our CGP designations solidify our commitment to practical methods of sustainability that deliver long-lasting value and quality to our clients. Methods we practice include improving energy efficiency and indoor air quality, proper insulation, shading and temperature control techniques and reducing water usage.

The Mosby roll call of Certified Green Professionals is:
Scott Mosby - President
Tim – Estimator & Construction Sales
Brian – Licensed Architect & Planner
Susie – Project Planner
Eric – Drafter & Scope Writer and Certified Energy Auditor

Congratulations to them for the achievement, and we look forward to the benefits they will bring to Greater St. Louis homeowners.

Eric is known for many things at Mosby Building Arts. He supervises the drafting team in the Planning and Design department. He takes care of phones, audio/visual and does our Home Energy Audits (that’s him testing an oven for carbon monoxide, above).

Eric is also known for his long, curly hair… or he was!

After much consideration, Eric changed his look with a new short style and is donating the ponytail (shown above) to Locks of Love. We are proud of him for making such a worthwhile and helpful contribution. And we love his new look!

A St. Louis homeowner had problems with windows that needed attention, so he called us for the Mosby Home Consultation. The problem window was the ground floor double window, shown in the center of the photo above.

On the interior of the window frame was a series of paint blisters that had “popped” and split open. Our homeowner wanted to know why this was happening on a 6-year old home, and was thinking he needed to replace the window. The reason he hired us to assess the problem was so he could get an honest answer and take care of this problem once and for all.

To the untrained eye, this would be a scrape and re-paint, but that doesn’t address what caused the problem in the first place. From decades of experience, our Mosby Consultant knew the blistering paint was a sign of water swelling the wood frame around the window.

All the homeowner saw was a break in the caulk and small leak. The Mosby Consultant knew there would be far reach consequences and proposed a solution that addressed and communicated the real problem. The homeowner decided to choose Mosby to take care of this.

When the Mosby Building Arts carpenters popped off the interior casing trim, the evidence confirmed just what the Consultant suspected: that water had leaked into the structure for many years.

After removing some of the exterior vinyl siding, the Mosby crew confirmed that reverse flashing had, indeed, occurred during original construction, and no water seal existed.

As shown in the photo above, the water-resistant house wrap comes up to the window, the window frame overlaps it to create an additional water barrier, but it is missing several crucial steps the prevent water from leaking into the window frame.

This is a perfect example of reverse flashing, which means that instead of repelling water, the installation method channels the water into the wall cavity and showing a leak at the window opening. Structural lumber was wet, warped and rotting. The insulation above the window was soaking up water like a sponge.

Prolonged water infiltration weakens the building structure and creates air contaminates such as mold and mildew, and eventually damages the cosmetic surfaces of your home’s interior. In this case, the internal water leak finally showed itself as paint blisters on the interior window frame.

The Mosby Consulting method accurately detected and exposed this destructive construction practice which is very common throughout the country today. In this case, the window leak was only the symptom that suggested the underlying problem of prolonged water leaking and potential structural decay.

Shown above is a Mosby Building Arts training model illustrating the proper way to plan, flash and perform window and door installation. This story demonstrates the difference between traditional construction methods and the Mosby practice of getting it right the first time.

This is the flashing method used on a windowsill to direct any water outside of the wall cavity and keep it on the outside of the building. In effect, we create an obstacle course of barriers that keep watering from penetrating your home.

The way our production crew does flashing and water protection is not common practice in the building or window trades. After years of fixing bad flashing mistakes, we developed these preventive measures so homeowners would have lasting quality for the investment they made in their homes.

This repair job is now completed properly, and it’s a testament to the talents of Mosby carpenters that it looks exactly the same as before. But there is one major difference: not a drop of water will leak into the interior!

The value of a Mosby Home Consultation is that it’s a highly effective tool for uncovering hidden problems in your home, and correcting them properly. You get peace of mind when Mosby house detectives uncover your reoccurring problems and solve the problem once and for all. Click here to get the help you need.