Bricklaying and repointing in Boldre

Repointing the exposed face. Boldre sits open to the south west, and driven rain works on the edges and the openings rather than the middle of a wall. On that face the mortar erodes back, the joint loses its arris and water starts standing in it, and once it is deep enough the wall is wet from the outside in. We rake out to about twice the joint width and point back in a mix matched to the wall. On the older solid wall cottages that means a lime mortar such as an NHL, which stays softer than the brick and keeps the wall breathable. On the later houses, and more than four in ten here went up from the mid eighties on, it means a cement mix. The sand is matched first, because the sand is what gives a mortar its colour, and getting lime and cement the wrong way round is what does the harm.

Stacks, and walls that never dry. A stack out here is exposed on every side and often still working, warm on the inside and soaked on the outside through a whole winter. The joints above the roof go first, the flaunching around the pots cracks, and then water tracks down the flue and shows up as staining on a bedroom wall. We repoint the stack, renew the flaunching and reset any pot that has moved, and it is worth doing everything on the stack in one visit rather than paying for the access twice. Under trees and on a north face a wall stays green and damp for months, and where the brick has already lost its face to frost it takes water like a sponge, so the worst are cut out and replaced with reclaimed brick.

Lanes here are narrow and mostly without a pavement, so the walls that edge them take knocks from wide vehicles, push from hedge roots and water sitting on top where a coping has gone. Once a section is bowed the honest answer is to take it down and rebuild it off a proper footing rather than prop it and hope, and where the wall is shared with a neighbour the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 gives them a formal say before it comes down. There are a lot of timber buildings on brick here, and the plinth under them is usually low, splashed by everything coming off the roof, and the first thing to fail. We rebuild plinths, put a damp proof course in where there never was one, and repoint the low brickwork on stables, stores and garages before the timber above it starts going.

No rate per square metre: what the joints are like decides the job. A cottage on a lane with no verge for a scaffold, a house down a gravel track where everything comes in on a trailer, and a stable block you can park a mixer beside are three different jobs before a brick is laid. 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.

The National Park changes very little about repairing brickwork and quite a lot about altering it. Repointing, replacing spalled brick and rebuilding a wall as it was are repairs, and you can get on with them.

The catch is that permitted development rights are cut back on National Park land, and the one that bites on this trade is the outside face of the house: cladding or rendering an external wall, which would be permitted development almost anywhere else, is not permitted here and needs an application first. The Planning Portal sets out where that line falls, and it catches people who have decided the answer to a wet wall is to cover the brick over.

That is worth knowing before you spend money, because covering an old wall is usually the wrong technical answer as well as the slower planning one. A solid wall that is wet on the exposed face is nearly always wet because the joints have eroded, a gutter is running over it or the ground outside is too high, and sealing the outside of it traps what is already in there.

Sort the pointing, the rainwater and the ground levels first, in a mortar the wall can cope with, and see where you are after a winter. If you still want the appearance changed after that, it is an application to the Authority rather than a job you can simply book in.

We cover Boldre, Pilley, Portmore, South Baddesley, Walhampton and the Lymington side of SO41, and the travel is in the quote rather than hidden in the day rate. 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.