Bricklaying in Boldre

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, the ones 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 in Boldre 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, not 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.

Brickwork in Boldre has no rate per square metre, because the joints matter more than the area. The joint. Raking out by hand is slow, and it is the only safe way on soft brick. A disc is quicker on hard modern brick but can chip the arrises. The depth of the old mortar and the number of spalled faces set the hours.

The age of the house. Most brickwork in Boldre is post-war or eighties, in hard cement mortar that is slow to rake. The few older cottages and outbuildings were laid in lime, and they need lime back.

Movement. A crack near a downpipe or a tree on clay may need stitching with helical bars before the wall is repointed. That is a separate line, and if the crack still looks live we say so and suggest a structural engineer before we touch it.

Access. A garden wall is ground work. A chimney or a gable needs scaffold, and how long it stands matters under the work at height rules. A house down a gravel track, where the scaffold, sand and mixer come in on a trailer, costs more to set up than one on a road.

Matching. Replacing spalled bricks means finding a reclaimed or new brick close in colour and size.

Ask the other quotes how deep the joints will be raked, whether by hand or by disc, what mix is going in, and whether the scaffold is included.

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.

Your wall will be priced by Thomas Hannen, who owns Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. He comes the fifteen or so miles from our Boscombe base to see it. Before you book a visit in Boldre, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

We build and repoint in the village, Pilley, Portmore, South Baddesley and Walhampton, and over towards Lymington. Planning for anything beyond a repair goes to the New Forest National Park Authority, and building regulations to New Forest District Council. Checkatrade shows a 10 out of 10 from a verified customer. You pay nothing for the site visit, or for the written quote with each item broken out.

Most repairs in Boldre 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.