Masonry Contractor in Little Canada

Little Canada is one of the shortest runs we make, and one of the first pieces of ground in Ramsey County anybody settled: Benjamin Gervais claimed land here in 1844.

The housing, though, is not old. The median Little Canada home dates from 1979, and about 1,598 of them went up in the 1970s alone, close to a third of the city in one decade. Roughly 188 predate 1940. So a city of under five thousand homes holds three separate building eras, and which one yours belongs to decides the whole job.

What We Do In Little Canada

A small city with a wide spread of building years, so the list below is genuinely mixed rather than aimed at one era.

Clay Till, And What The City Says About It

The ground under Little Canada is end moraine left by the Des Moines lobe: clayey, calcareous till rather than the free-draining sand you find east and north of here. The city's own planning document is unusually direct about what that means for anyone putting something in it.

It describes the soils across the city in groups. One is limited by the seasonal high-water table and susceptibility to frost action. Another, on the glacial moraine, is described this way: the water table is seasonally high in depressions and lower-lying areas, and moderate volume changes with shifts in soil moisture can cause concern when constructing buildings, roads, or streets. The same document flags large areas of severe soil limitation in the northern and eastern parts of the city.

That is a city telling its own residents that the ground moves with the weather. None of it is a reason to worry about your house, which went in on designed footings and was inspected for exactly this. It is a reason not to assume anything about a step, a wall or a patio until it has been dug. For masonry, it is the whole argument for depth. Anything bearing on soil that swells when it is wet and shrinks when it dries will find its own level, unless its footing has been carried down past where the frost reaches.

The second thing is that we cannot tell you what rock is underneath. Ramsey County's geological atlas dates from 1992 and has never been redone, and none of it is readable as mapping anybody can query. Other counties we work in have been remapped since. Ramsey has not, so we do not know.

Quickly. This is one of the shortest runs we make, and there is no travel charge, no minimum job size, and no fee for the estimate.

We work on the masonry behind it and on masonry elements like chimneys, steps, and walls. On the properties where a wall material is recorded, stucco outnumbers brick by roughly 8 to 1 here, and cracking in it frequently points to movement underneath rather than at the finish. Send a photograph, and we will tell you honestly whether it is our job or somebody else's.

Because on this particular ground, everything is decided. The city's own planning document describes soils here that change volume as they get wetter and drier. Something set shallow on soil like that will move. Something set below the frost line on a proper footing will not.

We are not going to invent an answer. Ramsey County's geological atlas dates from 1992 and there is no modern mapping of it anybody can query, which is not true of every county we work in. What we can tell you is what your footing is actually sitting on, once we have dug down to it.

Depends entirely on whether it is sound. A crown with hairline crazing and no structural cracks can be sealed, and that costs a good deal less. A crown that has broken into pieces cannot, and sealing it is money thrown away. Somebody has to look at it.

Possibly, and we have no stake in the answer. We fit no drain tile, no sumps, and no membrane, so when we say a wall needs drainage before it needs mortar, there is nothing in it for us either way.