Hello everyone,

I always appreciated the fact that one can post in such a forum and get good
advice / ideas, as it has been proven many times over.

Here is my problem:

I live in Queens, NY to give you ideas about my seasonality. About a year
ago, a new walkway + stairs was made in front of my house. It is composed from
bricks + bluestone slabs on top of them. The bricks are just for support of the
structure.

Few weeks ago, a crew came in to "clean the bricks" as that was never done
after the construction was completed. They used muriatic acid, washed it off
and then later on the same day came back to "seal / protect" the bricks they
applied Drylock Concrete Protector.

http://www.drylok.com/other-drylok-products/drylok-concrete-protector/

Everything looked great after they were done. However, the very next
morning, I saw the white stuff comeback in a couple of spots. That kept increasing to the
point that a few days later, I myself repeated the whole job (muriatic acid
(diluted 10-1), washing it off after five minutes with my 125 PSI water hose and
then re-applying the same Drylock after waiting 24 hours to do so after the
wash. There was no rain in between and the weather outside was 60F+ when I was
applying the Drylock. There was no rain for 36 hours afterwards so it had ample time to
dry.

The bad news, in less than 48 hours -- the efflorescence re-started. I
decided to takeoff the Drylcok (again with diluted muriatic acid & wash-off)
and leave things alone. We have now had a couple of rains and basically, it looks like nothing was ever was done and the efflorescence in all over the place.

What can I do next Spring to try to rectify this problem? I don't want to
paint the bricks, but I am very frustrated by this whole thing. Just so you
know, there are maybe 80-90 more bricks total that are used in the
walkway/stairs, so this is not like trying to deal with a whole house full of
bricks.

Any and all advice is very much appreciated!