Bricklaying and repointing in Breamore

Taking cement pointing back off soft brick. This is the biggest single job in a village like this one. Handmade brick from before the railways is soft and porous, and it was laid in a lime mortar that let the wall breathe and moved with it. When somebody points over that in sand and cement, the water that used to leave through the joint has nowhere to go and leaves through the brick instead. The face spalls, the joint stands proud, and each winter frost takes another layer. We rake the cement out by hand, unit by unit, and point back in an NHL lime mix with a sand matched for colour and grain, finished flush or slightly recessed so the brick edge reads as the face of the wall rather than the mortar.

Walls with no damp proof course. Older brickwork here often has no dpc in it, and never did. The wall handles ground moisture by letting it evaporate out through the lower courses, which is exactly why a breathable joint matters more at the bottom of the wall than anywhere else. Before anyone talks about injecting anything, we look at what has been done to the outside: a raised path, a new bed of gravel or a cement render skirt trapping damp against a solid wall causes more of what people call rising damp than the wall itself does. Where a face has blown past saving we cut the unit out and replace it with a reclaimed brick of the right period, laid so the bond reads correctly rather than as an obvious patch, and sourcing is half the job on an elevation you can see from the lane.

Stacks on the older houses stand well clear of the roof and take the weather from every side, so repointing a stack, renewing cracked flaunching around the pots and resetting a coping that has lost its bedding are the jobs that keep water out of the top of a wall. On a listed building the stack usually has to go back exactly as it was, which means recording it before anything is touched. Free-standing walls here weather from both faces at once and often carry a brick on edge coping that has started to lift, so bowed sections come back to plumb on a proper footing and clipped gate piers are repaired rather than propped. New work is extensions, garden rooms and rebuilt outbuildings in blockwork with a facing skin.

No rate per square metre, because the joints decide it and not the area. A cottage tight to the village street, a barn set back on its own ground, and a tall stack on an old range are three different jobs before a single joint is raked. 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, how many bricks, and whether scaffold is in.

We work in Breamore and along the Avon valley either side of it, Fordingbridge, Rockbourne, Sandleheath and Downton, and the SP6 postcode generally. 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.