Hello, I am working on a pergola. I have already purchased the wood which is a long story you can check out on another thread in the decking section. I may have to install 2 more posts. I have 2 10 foot posts I am thinking on putting in concrete to give some extra strength to 3 posts I already have installed. I am up in ND where I need to dig down ab out 4 feet. I would like to have my pergola and the post sitting around 8 feet out of the ground which means I can only sink it in 2 feet. My question is do i need to go and buy new posts and eat the cost of these to get 12 footers or can i pour a 2 foot pad of sorts with some rebar sticking out of thie pad and then set the posts on this pad to pour the remaining 2 feet around the post to ground level? Thoughts? Thanks for the assistance.

We bought a house late last year, it has a brick face. I had casually noticed that a few joints had no mortar in them, figured it had just crumbled out or that somehow (???) the builders had missed a couple, and was going to mortar those joints. But today I checked things out more carefully, and I found that along the entire face, about a foot above ground level, there is no mortar in every third joint. This can't be a coincidence - must be to allow for expansion, is that correct? Why is this expansion joint only along the bottom of the brick face (one brick tall)? Shouldn't it run vertically up the entire face? Anyway, like I said, I was going to fill those joints with mortar, but now thinking that should not be done. Also, are these expansion joints supposed to be completely open? Seems like they should be filled with some sort of flexible filler/caulking to still allow for expansion, but to also keep out water, etc. Help, please? Thanks.