Bricklaying in Alderholt

The older cottages are built in soft brick. Roughly a fifth of the houses in Alderholt went up before 1919, and those are solid walls of soft handmade brick bedded in lime. The joints come out by hand to about twice their depth, not with a disc cutter that widens the joint and chips the arris off the brick either side.

They go back in an NHL lime and sharp sand mix rather than cement, so the joint stays softer than the brick and the wall dries out through the mortar instead of through the brick face. The usual fault on the older cottages and outbuildings is a hard sand and cement pointing job done a generation ago. Water that can no longer leave through the joint leaves through the brick, frost gets into the wet face, and the face lifts off in flakes. Once that starts, the cement has to come out and the worst bricks are cut out and turned or replaced with reclaimed brick of the right size, because a modern one will never match the weathering around it.

The newer closes and estates. Most of Alderholt went up after the war and the busiest decade was the eighties, so a great deal of the brickwork is cavity work, a facing skin in stretcher bond over a blockwork inner leaf. The faults are different: a stepped crack where a corner has settled, a lintel dropped over a wide opening, a cracked cill letting water in behind the brick, and corroding ties on the older cavity walls. The ground here shrinks and swells, so where rainwater ends up beside a foundation is a structural question rather than only a damp one. We also spend a fair amount of time lowering ground back off a damp proof course, because a raised border, a drive or a patio laid over it bridges the dpc and the wall goes damp at skirting height.

Boundary walls along the lanes take it from vehicles and from tree roots. Leaning lengths are rebuilt off a proper footing, gate piers go back plumb, and coping is re-bedded so the top of the wall throws water off rather than drinking it. Stacks are repointed and the flaunching renewed in one visit. New work is extensions, garages and porches, with the facing brick bonded so the elevation reads as part of the house and a sample panel laid where the colour has to be right in daylight.

Brickwork is priced by what is wrong with it and how you get to it, never by the square metre.

Getting to it. A low boundary wall can be done from the ground, a garage elevation from a tower, and a chimney or a two storey gable needs scaffold. The longer scaffold stays up the more it costs, which HSE guidance makes a separate item.

Why it cracked. Alderholt is on clay, and clay moves: it shrinks in a dry summer and swells again in winter. A stepped crack through a garden wall or the corner of a garage may be that movement, the roots of a nearby tree, or a lintel that has given up. Thomas finds the cause before pricing, because rebuilding over it just brings the crack back.

The joints. Joints raked out by hand take longer, and on a soft cottage brick a grinder does more harm than good. Faces that have already spalled have to be cut out and replaced.

Matching. Eighties facing bricks can often still be found. An old cottage brick may need reclaimed stock, and lime mortar, not cement.

Other bricklayers should tell you how deep they rake and with what, which mix they use, and whether scaffolding is included.

From Boscombe to Alderholt is 12.5 miles. Brickwork takes us all over the village, taking in Daggons and Cripplestyle, out to Sandleheath and Fordingbridge and back across to Cranborne, Verwood and Three Legged Cross. Dorset Council is the council for planning and building control.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and takes a minute to look up. Thomas Hannen runs it, and he comes to your wall and prices the job himself. We have a verified 10 out of 10 from a customer on Checkatrade. Your site visit is free, as is the written quote, which itemises the work. Before you book a visit in Alderholt, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Alderholt need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.