Bricklaying in Bearwood

Brickwork, in the places it goes first. There is nothing pre-1919 in Bearwood and a third of it went up in the eighties, so the wall you have is a cavity wall with a cement mix in a shallow joint, and it does not fail evenly.

The gable that catches the weather goes first, then the course under a gutter that has been overflowing for a couple of winters, then the chimney above the roof line. We rake out to roughly twice the joint width, by hand where a disc would bruise the brick, and point back in a matched mix finished to the profile already on the wall, usually a bucket handle here rather than flush or weather struck. Patching one elevation of a semi is days, not weeks.

Movement in a long run of houses. Nearly three in ten dwellings here are terraced, and a run of linked houses moves with the seasons. Where nothing was built in to let it, the crack turns up in the same places: stepping up through the joints from the corner of an opening, straight down the line where two houses meet, or at the junction between the house and a garage built off a shallower footing. We cut out and rebuild the damaged brickwork, and where the crack is on the line of a shared wall, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 decides how it gets handled with next door before anything starts. The ground here shrinks and swells, so where the rainwater off a roof ends up beside a footing is a structural question and not only a damp one.

Over the openings on this stock you have a concrete or steel lintel, and when the bearing at one end has gone the crack above it is the symptom rather than the fault. Corroding cavity ties show as a horizontal line of lifted joints on the most exposed elevation. A brick kept wet by a leaking downpipe, or by ground raised above the damp proof course, loses its face to the first hard frost and then takes water like a sponge, so those are cut out and replaced one at a time. Matching an eighties facing is the awkward part because a lot of them are out of production, and a reclaimed brick or a careful blend usually looks better than the nearest new one. The estate is stitched together with footpaths, so there are a lot of low walls, piers and planters taking knocks from cars and push from hedge roots, and half a brick thick with no pier every few metres is a wall that will lean eventually.

We do not price brickwork by the square metre. The joints, the brick and the ground decide the time. Getting to the wall. A mid terrace where every barrow goes round the block or through the house, a link detached with the garage tight to next door, and a front boundary wall you can park beside are all different jobs.

A chimney or a gable needs a scaffold, which the work at height rules turn into a line of its own.

Cracks and the ground. Bearwood is on clay that shrinks and swells. Stepped cracks that open in a dry summer often trace back to a leaking drain, a downpipe onto bare ground, or a tree near the footings. Helical bar stitching and repointing are only worth doing once the cause is dealt with.

The joints. Houses here were built in cement mortar. Where joints have eroded, the depth that needs raking out, by hand or with a disc, sets the hours. Spalled faces are cut out one brick at a time.

Matching the brick. Facing bricks from the post-war decades and the eighties have often gone out of production, so finding a close match from reclaim takes time, and the mortar colour has to match too.

Before you choose, ask any other bricklayer how far back the joints will be raked and how, what mix they will use, how many bricks are allowed for, and whether the scaffold is included.

The ground under this part of town is cohesive and it shrinks and swells with the seasons. In a dry summer it pulls away and settles, in a wet winter it takes water up and pushes back, and anything sat on a shallow footing goes along for the ride.

That is why cracking in Bearwood is so often in the porch, the conservatory dwarf wall, the garage return or the garden wall rather than in the house itself: the house is on a deeper foundation and the add ons usually are not. A crack that opens in August and closes by February is telling you about the ground, not the brickwork, and pointing it up in summer just means it opens somewhere else.

The practical thing you can do about it is control where rainwater ends up. A downpipe running into a gully that has cracked, a soakaway put in too close to the house, or a drive that falls back towards the wall all keep one patch of ground wet while the rest dries out, and that difference is what moves a footing. Approved Document H is the standard for getting surface water away properly, and it is worth sorting before you pay anyone to repair a wall it is undermining.

Where we are rebuilding on this ground we dig deeper than the old footing, keep new planting away from it, and tell you honestly if the sensible answer is to watch the crack for a year first.

Bearwood is 5 miles from Boscombe, where we are based. We do brickwork here and in Kinson, Merley, Canford Magna, Wallisdown and the rest of BH11, and BCP Council covers planning and building control.

The contract would be with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. When you ring, Thomas Hannen, who owns the firm, comes out himself to look at the wall and price the work. A customer verified by Checkatrade scored us 10 out of 10 there. Coming out costs nothing, and nor does the written, itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Bearwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Bearwood 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.