Weep Holes

Weep holes are openings in the outer wall of a building to let the water out and evaporate. In modern masonry, plastic 'weeps' are used for this purpose. Ventilation of the walls is another factor when it comes to the necessity of weep holes. The water is lead out, it dries and thus, it hardly gives any scope for mildew, dry rot and damp. This saves the walls of a building. These are also called weeper holes. Sometimes these are made during home construction, but in masonry these holes can be made even in existing walls.

To make the cracks less obvious, tubes surrounded by mortar, are used by masons as a part of building materials for weep holes. This hole is covered with netting to keep pests at bay from the wall. These are weep hole covers. Now another thing which needs to be remembered here is that weeper holes have to be installed above grade. Practically, these should be installed around windows and doors and if you want, you can have them for the shower too.

In case you want to know about installing weep holes, here is what you can do.

Weep Hole Installation

Existing Walls

• First, you need to check properly if there are weep holes in brick. It may happen that these holes may have thick white ropes to absorb moisture and may be hiding the holes.
• If the wall was built without them, you can construct a set of vents on the wall or even retrofit the wall.
• Buy a brick vent and then with a circular saw, that has a masonry blade, cut a single brick from the 4th or 5th course of your wall.
• Install the vent, sealing it with mortar or caulk. For adding vents, every 6 to 8 feet across the wall, repeat the process.
• These are especially helpful to resolve moisture problems, specially in veneer walls.
• You can also think about retrofitting the wall to construct weeper holes at the door and window base and top.
• To construct these holes at the base and top of doors and windows, you would need to remove a small area of bricks at one go. You would need to install the flashing, and then add them.
• Then replace the brick and repeat the process in small sections till the entire flashing has been added.

There is another process to do this if the wall is a retainer wall. This is how you can do that.

Weep Holes in Retaining Wall

• Considering that it is a brick wall, get a large masonry bit.
• If the wall is timber, a large-sized ordinary bit would be just fine.
• Get hold of an electric hammer drill and drill holes in brick and timber (whatever you have) as near as you can to the bottom of the wall.
• The distance among two holes should be a meter away from each other.
• Then using a stick you ca deepen the outlet through the drilled spot.

Weep holes are great to let the water out and keep the walls dry. However, these can also be a starting point for some problems. These can provide a gate pass for rodents and insects to enter the building. Believe it or not, swarming bees, in addition to European wasps, love cavities. Worse still, mice make a crack through these weeper holes and snakes, spiders and cockroaches can make these cavities their abode. But despite these possible infestation issues, having weep holes in the building walls is essential to allow water runoff and drainage.

If you are still not sure whether you can pull it off, just call a mason and get your work done!