Bricklaying and repointing 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.
Most Broadstone brickwork we look at 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.
Three things get people dialling. 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 jobs we do most 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 rather than 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
From your call to a written price
Thomas prices it himself after a survey of the whole property, with photographs of the open joints and the blown faces so the quote can be read against the wall, and the quote itemises access, raking out, the mix, each elevation and any brick replacement. On permission, repointing and like-for-like brick repair are maintenance, so at almost every Broadstone address there is nothing to apply for. It changes if you alter the appearance of an elevation, and the Planning Portal sets out where that line falls. No conservation area covers Broadstone and the council keeps the list if you want to check, along with its listed building records for the four listed entries in the area. Boundary walls have their own height limits before planning permission bites, and where a wall is shared the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 puts a notice period on the work.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you know what the joints are like. A bungalow gable off a tower, a two storey rear elevation behind a narrow side gate and a sloping garden retaining wall are three different jobs. The platform is a priced line rather than a favour, under work at height rules. Depth of rake and the state of the brick faces decide the hours, not the square metres. Two quotes for the same wall are usually two different jobs, so ask what is in each.
If something has moved
Loose brickwork, or a wall that has shifted
Ring rather than use the form. Anything leaning or overhead comes first: a moving chimney, a parapet, a wall pushed out by roots or clipped by a vehicle. On the sloping plots here the one that will not wait is a retaining wall starting to bulge, because the ground behind it never stops pushing. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
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 here, 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
A local firm you can check
We cover Broadstone, Corfe Mullen, Merley, Upton and the rest of BH18 and the Poole side of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council. 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.
Questions
Broadstone questions we get asked
Broadstone has four listed entries and no conservation area. What applies?
Ordinary repair rules, for almost everybody. Broadstone has no conservation area of its own and only four listed entries in the whole settlement, so repointing and brick replacement are maintenance and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has nothing to approve. The mortar colour and the joint profile are your decision rather than a planning officer's. If your house is one of the four, that reverses completely and the specification becomes part of the consent.
Our retaining wall is bowing. Is repointing any use?
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.
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Bricklaying and repointing near Broadstone
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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.