Travis Nech's Free Book Library
Every book, free. Brick, mortar, lintels, foundations — fifty years of Texas trade knowledge in plain English. Tap any book to download the PDF straight to your phone or desktop.
🏠 Brick & Masonry — Champion Brick Repair
The Brick Repair Handbook
A Texas Homeowner's Guide to Spotting Trouble Early, Understanding Repairs, and Hiring with Confidence
Your brick walls are talking to you. Learn how brick veneer really works, why Texas clay moves your walls, and how to read cracks like a map.
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Lintels: The Steel Above Your Windows and Doors
What Every Brick-Home Owner Needs to Know About the Steel Holding Up Their Walls
Above every opening sits a steel beam doing the heaviest quiet work in the house. The two ways lintels fail, the warning signs, and what proper replacement involves.
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Mortar: The Glue That Holds Your Home Together
A Homeowner's Guide to Mortar Types, Repointing, Color Matching, and Keeping Brick Walls Standing for Decades
The three jobs every mortar joint performs, why mortar must never be harder than the brick, and repointing step by step.
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The Homeowner's Guide to Brick Walls
How to Read, Repair, and Protect Your Brick Veneer — in Plain Texas English
Why your brick is a skin and not the structure, what every crack pattern is reporting, and a season-by-season Texas maintenance calendar.
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Rusted Steel Lintel Repair
Why Steel Angles Corrode and What Texas Weather Does About It
Every window, door, and garage opening in your brick home has steel hiding above it. Why lintels rust, what Texas weather does to them, and how to read the warning signs before the brick starts moving.
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Cracks in Your Brick: When to Worry and When to Leave It Alone
A Mason's Field Guide to Reading Cracks — Read the Crack Before You Fix It
Most cracks are nothing — some are something. The four crack families, the simple tests that sort cosmetic from structural, and what each type costs to fix.
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How Much Does Brick Repair Cost? A Straight Price Guide
Brick Repair Cost Per Square Foot and Every Other Number You Need Before the First Estimate
What '$20 to $40 per square foot' actually means, how ranges get translated into real estimates, and every number you need before the first contractor walks up.
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Mortar Color Matching for Old Texas Brick Homes
Sand, Lime, and the Repair That Disappears
Why fresh mortar never matches old mortar by accident — sand, lime, and the craft of making a repair disappear into a fifty-year-old wall.
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Lintel Replacement Cost in Texas
What a Window, Door, or Garage Opening Really Runs
A window lintel, a door lintel, and a sixteen-foot garage span are three different jobs with three different bills — the steel, the labor, the shoring, and the price, explained straight.
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Water Behind Your Brick Veneer
Weep Holes, Flashing, and Drainage — The Hidden System in Your Walls
The little gaps at the base of your brick wall are the most important holes in your house nobody told you about. How the hidden drainage system works, how it fails, and how to fix it.
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How to Hire a Masonry Contractor
Questions, Red Flags, and Straight Answers
Fifty years of watching homeowners hire masons. The questions to ask, the red flags that matter, and what separates the craftsmen from the crews.
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The DFW Lintel Report
Why North Texas Brick Eats Steel Angles
Fifty years on ladders under Dallas brick. What a North Texas lintel lives through, why the failure schedule is so predictable, and what replacement really involves.
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Falling Brick Over the Doorway
Emergency Lintel Failure — What to Do Tonight
How to tell you're having a lintel failure emergency tonight — and exactly what to do before morning.
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Tuckpointing vs. Repointing
Which One Your House Actually Needs
Two different jobs sold under one name — and the confusion costs homeowners money. Which one your house actually needs, and how to make sure that's what you're paying for.
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The Foundation Repair Report
A Homeowner's Plain-English Guide to Foundation Trouble, Honest Repair, and Hiring the Right Contractor
Read cracks like a map, understand Texas expansive clay, and learn the fifteen questions that separate pros from salesmen.
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Why Foundations Fail
What Texas Clay Does to Your House — and How to Read the Signs
The soil science behind nearly every cracked slab and sticking door in Texas — expansive clay, the moisture cycle, and the prevention playbook.
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Driven to Refusal
The Full Engineering Story of the Pressed Concrete Pile
Precast concrete cylinders pressed by hydraulic ram until the earth refuses them — and why the installation IS the load test.
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Drainage Is Destiny
A Texas Homeowner's Guide to Gutters, Grading, and Water Management Around Your Foundation
Most Texas foundation problems aren't really foundation problems — they're water problems. Gutters, grading, French drains, and hiring right.
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Engineering Truth, Vol. 1: The Refusal Standard
Why the Ground Must Prove It Can Hold
The single test that separates a permanent repair from an expensive guess: refusal — the moment a pressed concrete pile reaches load-bearing ground and physically cannot go further.
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The Foundation Contractor Playbook
A Texas Homeowner's Field Guide to Vetting Bids, Reading Warranties, and Getting a Foundation Repair That Actually Holds
Read your house's symptoms, fix drainage first, then vet bids, insurance, references, and warranties — and walk away from the warranty shell games.
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Engineering Truth, Vol. 2: Reading Cracks Like Instruments
What Walls, Floors, and Foundations Are Telling You Before the Damage Gets Expensive
Every house talks in lines. Learn to read cracks in brick, drywall, and floors, measure them with telltales and a crack log, and tell a water, lintel, tree, or plumbing problem from a foundation problem.
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Holding Ground
A Texas Homeowner's Year-Round Guide to Soil Moisture, Plumbing Leaks, Tree Roots, and Keeping Your Foundation Where It Belongs
Your Texas house sits on clay that swells when it rains and shrinks when the summer turns dry — and that quiet movement underneath is what sticks doors, opens cracks, and slopes floors. Holding Ground gives you the year-round care system that keeps a foundation steady: how to read the small signs your house gives you, how to keep soil moisture even with sensible watering, what trees and shrubs really do to the ground, how to spot a hidden plumbing leak before it wrecks a slab, and how drainage protects without drying you out. If repair day ever comes, pressed concrete piles driven to refusal are explained in plain language — and so is the care that keeps a repaired foundation repaired.
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Engineering Truth, Vol. 3: Water Always Wins
How Moisture Moves Texas Clay, Walls, and Foundations — and What Actually Stops It
Water is behind most brick, mortar, lintel, and foundation failure. Learn how expansive clay drinks and shrinks, how roofs, plumbing, trees, and walls move moisture, how to measure it, and why repair order matters — water first, pressed piles to refusal second, cosmetics last.
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Not Always the Foundation
A Texas Homeowner's Guide to Telling Real Foundation Movement Apart From Plumbing, Framing, Roof, and Settling Look-Alikes, and Knowing What to Fix First
A door sticks. A crack opens. In Texas, one word jumps into every homeowner's mind: foundation — and it is the most expensive word in the house, especially when it is wrong. Learn how a Texas foundation really moves, how to read doors, floors, and cracks by family, and how plumbing leaks, lifting roof trusses, thirsty trees, drainage, and honest new-house settling wear foundation trouble's clothes. Learn to measure before you guess, which professional to call first, second, and third — and, when the verdict truly is the foundation, what pressed concrete piles driven to refusal actually look like.
⬇ Download PDFWritten by Travis Nech — five decades of hands-on Texas brick and foundation work.
Brick questions: (817) 523-1540 · Foundation questions: (817) 670-4474