Brick and stone buildings will remain sound for centuries with little maintenance, unless they are subjected to elements, like in the northern climates. But even here (in Canada), the only threat to masonry is water, followed by frost. In all cases, when we are called to do tuckpointing, it is always from a faulty eaves trough, a poorly functioning window sill, or water wicking up from the ground into the stone or brick walls and then freezing. This causes the mortar to disintegrate and bricks to spall (break up). If you don’t let masonry walls get wet, there will be little or no maintenance.
When we do tuckpointing, we match the color exactly, and we take care to leave the texture of the new mortar the same as the adjoining mortar joints, so you can hardly tell where we did a repointing job.
