Bricklaying in Broadstone
Repointing, brick replacement, retaining walls, chimneys and new brickwork across Broadstone and BH18.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Most Broadstone brickwork wants repointing and a handful of bricks cutting out, not rebuilding. The houses and bungalows here were built well enough that what has failed after sixty-odd years is the mortar and the exposed edges, and both are repairable.
Brickwork in Broadstone gives trouble on the weather side, on sloping plots and wherever new paving meets an old wall. The joints on the weather side have gone back and the brick faces are starting to flake with them. A garden retaining wall has begun to bulge, which on a sloping plot is not something to watch for another winter. Or somebody has had a patio or a path laid, and now there is damp inside a wall that was dry for fifty years.
None of those can be priced from the pavement, and two of them are commonly misdiagnosed. We come out, get close to the wall, get down to ground level as well, and tell you which one you have got and what it needs. The site visit and the written quote are both free, and we are only a few miles away.
The work
The usual brickwork jobs around Broadstone
Fifties and sixties joints. Broadstone filled in largely across the two decades after the war. Just over 63 per cent of what stands here went up between 1945 and 1982, with the peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the mortar of that period is a strong gauged cement mix that has ended up harder than the facing brick beside it.
Hard joint against softer brick means the wall releases its water through the brick face, so the joints stand proud and the faces start to flake. We rake out by hand to about twice the joint width, wash down, and point back in a mix matched for strength as well as colour, finished bucket handle or weather struck on an exposed elevation and flush where the original was, with a sample panel on your own wall to look at before an elevation starts. Once a face has blown, every frost takes another layer, so failed units are cut out and replaced with a matched brick, reclaimed where the original is no longer made, so the patch carries the same weathering as the wall around it. The worst of it is usually in the bottom few courses and on the reveals either side of an opening.
Retaining walls and garden steps. Plots here sit on a slope and a great many are terraced with brick retaining walls, planters and steps that were built as landscaping, not as structure. Ground behind a wall does not stop pushing, and on cohesive ground that shrinks and swells it moves with the seasons as well. If a retaining wall has bulged, lost its weepholes or started shedding its coping, the repair is to take it down and rebuild it with a proper footing, drainage behind it and the right thickness for the height, rather than to point over the cracks.
Bungalows are 42 per cent of the housing here, which puts a lot of brickwork within reach of a tower and a lot of single skin garage wall along the boundary. An attached garage of this period is one skin of the same facing brick, with a pier at each end that takes every knock. Plenty of stacks have had no fire under them since the house went over to gas, and a redundant stack still gets rained on, so we repoint stacks, renew flaunching, reset copings and cap a finished stack properly rather than sealing damp inside it. New work is extensions and garden rooms with a facing skin laid to match, a lintel cut into a widened opening, or a bowed section rebuilt to plumb where the foundation under it is sound.
How it runs
Mending post-war brickwork, chimneys and garden walls
Thomas prices the job himself after walking the whole house, not only the wall you rang about. He photographs the open joints, the cracks and any blown faces so the quote can be read against the wall. Most Broadstone brickwork is post-war, laid in a harder cement mortar, so the likely repairs are a bungalow chimney, a cracked garden wall, a porch or a retaining wall on a sloping plot.
The written quote itemises access, raking out, the mix, each elevation and any brick replacement. One point of contact runs the job. A bungalow gable comes off a tower. Dust sheets go down under every elevation, the rubble is bagged and taken away with us, and the paths are swept each day. If a crack runs further than it looked, work stops while you look at the photographs and the extra cost.
Repointing and like for like brick repair are maintenance, so at almost every address there is nothing to apply for. Changing the look of an elevation is different, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls explains where that starts. Broadstone has two conservation areas near the centre, shown on the council list, and BCP keeps the listed building records too. Where a wall is shared, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 puts a notice period on the work.
Cost
Why a cracked wall on clay is priced with care
We do not quote a rate per square metre. A metre of wall tells you nothing until you know what the joints and the bricks are doing.
Why it cracked. Broadstone sits on clay that shrinks in a dry summer and swells in a wet winter, so a stepped crack in a bungalow wall can be seasonal movement rather than failed mortar. Repointing over live movement just cracks again. Sometimes the honest answer is to watch it through a season before spending anything, and we will say so.
The mortar that is there. Post-war walls were laid in cement mortar, which is hard to rake out. Getting it out without chipping the brick faces is slow work, and depth of rake decides the hours far more than the area does.
Access. A bungalow gable off a tower, a two storey rear wall behind a narrow side gate, and a garden retaining wall on a slope do not share one access plan. The platform is a priced line under the work at height rules.
Matching the brick. Replacement bricks have to match in size and colour, and some post-war facings are no longer made, which means sourcing reclaimed stock.
Ask any other bricklayer how deep they will rake and with what, what mix they will use, and whether they have looked at why the wall cracked.
If something has moved
A wall that has moved or a chimney that looks wrong
Keep people away from anything leaning or overhead: a chimney that has shifted on the ridge, a parapet, or a garden wall pushed out by roots or clipped by a car. On the sloping plots here, a retaining wall that has started to bulge will not wait, because the soil behind it never stops pushing.
Ring us rather than filling in the form. The first visit props or takes down whatever is unsafe and tells you what caused it. We run booked work Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and if you ring and nobody answers, we ring back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Bungalow country changes the job at both ends
Around two in five dwellings in Broadstone are bungalows, which is a long way above what you find in most of the area, and it changes the brickwork job in your favour at the top of the wall. Almost all of a bungalow elevation is reachable from a tower or a low scaffold instead of a full lift, and the platform is usually the biggest single line on a repointing quote.
That is why we will often suggest doing a whole elevation on a bungalow where on a two storey we would suggest patching the worst of it. The access is already paid for, and coming back to the same wall in five years means paying for it twice.
The catch is at the other end. On a bungalow the wall you live behind is the wall that gets splashed, and the damp proof course sits close to the ground to start with. Sixty years of new paths, resurfaced drives, patios laid over the old one and raised beds against the house have, on a lot of properties in Broadstone, brought the outside level up to or above that dpc.
Once it is bridged, no amount of repointing will dry the wall out. So when we look at a Broadstone bungalow with damp in a wall, the first thing we measure is not the joints. It is how far the ground sits below the dpc, and whether the fix is brickwork at all or a channel dug back down the outside.
Who you are dealing with
The bricklayer behind the quote
Brickwork in Broadstone, Dunyeats and Clayford, and out through Corfe Mullen and Upton, is 7.3 miles from where we start in Boscombe. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council is the planning and building control authority for all of it.
You are dealing with a limited company, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which is Thomas Hannen's firm. He looks at the wall and prices it in person. One customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade has been verified. The site visit is free, and the written quote with each line itemised is free too. Before you book a visit in Broadstone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Broadstone?
Most repairs in Broadstone 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.
| Question | In Broadstone |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Broadstone. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Ridgeway and Broadstone Park Conservation Area and Tudor Road and Golf Links Road Conservation Area. They cover parts of Broadstone, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Broadstone. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Broadstone. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in Broadstone
Broadstone has four listed entries and two conservation areas. What applies?
Ordinary repair rules, for almost everybody. Repointing and brick replacement are maintenance, so on an ordinary house Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has nothing to approve, and the mortar colour and the joint profile are your decision, not a planning officer's.
Broadstone does have two conservation areas near its centre, Ridgeway and Broadstone Park, and Tudor Road and Golf Links Road, and a change that alters how an elevation looks is worth checking there first. There are only four listed entries in the whole settlement. If your house is one of the four, that reverses completely and the specification becomes part of the consent.
Our retaining wall is bowing. Will fresh mortar in the face help?
Not on its own. A bow means the wall is being pushed, and the push is usually water building up behind it because the weep holes have silted up or were never put in. Pointing the face of a wall that is moving hides the evidence and does nothing else. We dig down behind a section, look at the drainage and the footing, then price either taking the top courses off and rebuilding or the whole thing.
Should the verge and ridge bedding be done with the walls?
On a bungalow it is usually the more urgent half of the job. Broadstone is 42.0% bungalows, so there is a great deal of ridge, hip and verge per household and comparatively little wall, and the bedding along those runs takes weather from above and below. It gives way before the elevations do. If access is going up for the brickwork anyway, doing the bedding at the same time saves a second visit.
Broadstone has a high surface water risk. Does brickwork suffer?
It does, from the bottom up. The surface water band in Broadstone is high even though the Stour is over three kilometres off, so the water that causes trouble arrives across the ground in a storm rather than out of a river. Bottom courses that are soaked repeatedly and then dry out lose their mortar first and shed their faces in frost. Where rain goes when the gullies cannot take it is part of what we look at.
Can you point the bungalow while we stay living in it?
Yes. Raking out is dusty and noisy, but all of it happens outside, and on a single storey house we work one elevation at a time so there are always windows you can open on the far side. We tape and sheet the glass on the wall being cut, keep the mixer off the drive where there is room, and clear the ground each evening. Nobody has to move out for a repoint.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying near Broadstone
Nearby places we also cover for bricklaying, with straight-line distances from Broadstone, and the other trades we offer in Broadstone itself.
Bricklaying nearby
Our other trades in Broadstone
Brickwork and repointing guides
Lime or cement mortar: which do you need? Single storey extension: planning and building regs Subsidence cracks: which ones matterEverything we do in Broadstone Bricklaying, all areas Every area we cover
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Get your Broadstone brickwork priced properly
Tell us which wall is the problem. We come out, look at it close up and at ground level, and put it in writing.