Bricklaying and repointing in Blandford Forum

Repointing an old town front. Nearly a fifth of Blandford is pre-1919, and the joints on that brickwork are fine, sometimes barely wider than a pencil line, with lime and a local sand behind them. There is no way to rake that out with a disc without cutting the arrises off the bricks either side and leaving a wall of wide grey lines that can never be undone. It comes out by hand with a chisel and goes back in a lime mix, usually an NHL, matched to the old mortar for colour, sand and strength, finished to the profile the wall already carries rather than a modern weather struck edge. Fine joints are slow. A front elevation on one of these houses is a fortnight of work.

Where a terrace finishes in a parapet, the wall takes weather on both faces and from above, so it is always the wettest brickwork on the building. A cracked coping, a missing damp proof course under it or a blocked outlet behind it will soak the brick until it freezes, and the faces then start spalling in the room below the roof rather than up at the top. We rebuild the top courses, bed a coping that actually sheds water, and put the damp proof course back where it should have been. Older openings here are spanned by brick arches, and when one drops the crack over the window is only the sign. The arch has to be supported, cut out and set back with the bricks in their original order, and if the timber or lintel behind it has gone that comes out too.

Stacks, and the neighbour they sit on. Three in ten houses in the town are terraced, so a stack here is tall, exposed and often sat on the party wall between two houses, which means the joints and the flaunching go early and the repair involves your neighbour whether you like it or not. The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 sets out how that is handled, and the scaffold usually has to come off the pavement or through somebody's yard, which is worth sorting out before the work is booked rather than on the morning. Once a face has come off a brick, the one behind it takes water like a sponge and the next frost takes the one above, so damaged bricks are cut out one at a time and replaced, turning a sound brick where the back of it is still good and sourcing reclaimed brick of the right size and colour where it is not.

There is a lot of old boundary wall in this town, most of it half a brick thick with piers, standing on a footing nobody would build today, and roots, vehicles and water sitting on a lost coping are what finish them. We take down and rebuild the section that has moved, keep the old brick where it is sound, and put back a coping and gate pier that will not be doing this again in five years. Round the edge of the town it is the 1970s and 1980s housing: extensions, garage conversions, porches and opening a wall up. That is ordinary cavity work off a footing dug to a proper foundation depth, with building control inspecting it as the job goes.

No rate per square metre, because the joints decide it and not the area. A town centre terrace where the scaffold has to stand on the pavement, a cottage up an alley where every barrow goes in by hand, and an estate semi with a drive beside it are three different jobs before a brick is cut. A chimney or a gable wants a scaffold, and how long it stands is why work at height rules make access a priced line. Raking by hand is slow, and joint depth and spalled faces decide the hours. Ask how deep, by hand or disc, what mix, and whether scaffold is in.

Most people assume a conservation area tells them what they can repair. It does not, really. Repointing and repairing an unlisted house inside the area needs no application at all, and you do not have to wait for anybody. What is controlled is demolition.

Knocking down a boundary wall over a metre high where it fronts a road, or over two metres elsewhere, counts as demolition in a conservation area and needs permission first, even where you fully intend to rebuild it exactly as it was. The Planning Portal sets out those heights, and the order matters: the consent comes before the wall comes down, not after somebody has already started clearing the rubble.

The practical version, for a town with this much old fabric in it, is to spend ten minutes finding out what your address actually is before you collect prices. There are three possibilities: unlisted and outside the area, unlisted but inside it, or listed, and each one changes the mix, the method and the timetable.

If you are listed, allow a couple of months for a determination and expect a conservation officer to ask about the sand, the mix and the joint profile, which is a question a sample panel answers better than a paragraph. We will build the panel and write the specification in the quote so it can go straight in with the application.

We cover Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Bryanston, Stourpaine, Charlton Marshall and the rest of DT11, and we work up here most weeks. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.