Bricklaying in Beacon Hill

Joints and faces where they have actually failed. Much of the housing around Beacon Hill is post-war cavity brick, hard and machine made with a thin cement joint, and that stock rarely wants a whole house done.

What goes first is the gable that takes the south westerlies and the run of wall under a gutter that has been overflowing, where the mortar has weathered back and the joint has lost its edge. We rake out to about twice the width of the joint, by hand wherever a disc would damage the brick, then point back to the profile the wall already has. Frost takes the face off a brick that has been kept wet, and in Beacon Hill that shows up under leaking gutters, behind downpipes and in the courses above the damp proof course where ground has been built up against the wall.

A stepped crack over a garage opening or a bay usually means the lintel has dropped or its bearing has failed, and filling the crack achieves nothing at all. Cavity ties of this period corrode and lift the joints in a regular horizontal line on the most exposed elevation. We tell you which of the two you have, and a crack that is still moving is better watched for a season than rebuilt around.

Retaining walls, and the ground behind them. Plots step in Beacon Hill, so plenty of gardens have a retaining wall behind a drive or between two levels, and those fail differently from a house wall. Water builds up behind them because nothing was left for it to escape through, the wall goes bowed, and the coping and the gate piers move first. We rebuild what has moved, repoint what has not, and sort the drainage while the wall is open. New work is extension skins, garage conversions and openings cut through with a lintel over, and building control signing it off.

Our brickwork quotes are not per square metre. What the joints and the ground are doing sets the time. Getting at the wall. A bungalow wall worked from a trestle, a gable or a chimney stack that needs a scaffold, and a retaining wall at the back of a sloping garden are very different set-ups. The work at height rules mean the scaffold is priced separately, and the time it stands matters as much as its size.

Why it cracked. The clay under Beacon Hill dries and shrinks in a hot spell and takes up water again through the winter. A stepped crack that opens and closes with the seasons often traces back to a leaking downpipe, a blocked gully or a tree drawing water from the soil near the footings. Stitching it with helical bars and repointing is only worth doing once that cause is sorted, so the two are priced together.

The joints. How deep they need raking, by hand or with a disc, and how many spalled faces need cutting out decide the hours. A cement-rich mortar harder than the brick makes the brick take the damage next time.

Matching. A weathered facing brick means hunting for reclaimed stock or building a trial panel, and both take time.

Put these to any other bricklayer. How deep will the joints be raked, and how? Which mix? How many bricks are allowed for, and is the scaffold included?

Beacon Hill is one of the few places we work where heritage mostly stays out of the way. No conservation area covers it, so on an ordinary house nobody is going to tell you what colour your mortar has to be or turn down a brick for being the wrong period. There are listed entries not far out, so on an older building check the Historic England list for your address first.

Repointing, replacing spalled brick and rebuilding a garden wall are all maintenance and you can simply get on with them. It also means you have a free hand you would not have in Wimborne or Blandford: if the front wall has to come down, it can go back up in something you actually like rather than something a planning officer will accept.

The rules that do apply in Beacon Hill are the ordinary ones about walls. A new or rebuilt boundary wall over one metre high where it fronts a road, or over two metres anywhere else, needs planning permission, and the height is taken from the higher ground where levels change, which catches people out on stepped plots.

If the wall is shared with next door, or you are cutting into it, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 gives your neighbour a formal say, and that is far easier served early than after the scaffold has arrived. Neither is a reason not to do the work. Both are cheaper dealt with before the quote than after we start.

We are based 9.8 miles away in Boscombe, and we cover Beacon Hill with the rest of BH16 around Lytchett Minster, Corfe Mullen, Lytchett Matravers and Upton. For planning and building control the authority is Dorset Council.

You would be dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. It is Thomas Hannen's firm, and Thomas looks at the wall and writes the price himself rather than sending anyone else. A verified Checkatrade customer gave us a score of 10 out of 10. The visit and the written, itemised quote are both without charge. Before you book a visit in Beacon Hill, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Beacon Hill 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.