Salitre

Over many years, adobe and brick walls degrade at the base due to higher moisture close to the ground.  Most of the walls in our building have experienced varying degrees of this degradation.
 
The cause of this wall degradation is known in Spanish as “salitre”.  Salitre is a mixture of potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate, and is known in English as saltpeter.  Salitre probably forms due to the high organic matter content of the adobe or brick.  Interestingly, saltpeter, or salitre, was widely used in the curing of meat products before modern curing practices were developed which use purified sodium nitrite.  To stop this from deteriorating further, we sprayed on a product known as “Finsalitre” (literally – end salitre).

After the Finsalitre treatment, the walls were fixed using cement.