Bricklaying and repointing in Cadnam and Bartley
Repointing, brick repair, chimney work and garden walls across Cadnam, Bartley and the SO40 lanes between them.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Bricklaying and repointing
Repointing and brick repair: what we do in Cadnam and Bartley
Nearly all the brickwork we get called to in Cadnam and Bartley wants repointing rather than rebuilding. The job is to rake the tired joints out by hand and put back a mortar that suits the wall, and that is not the same mortar on a soft old cottage as it is on a 1970s cavity wall two doors along.
Three things usually bring people to the phone out here. Mortar that has gone back to sand, so you can pull it out of a joint with a thumbnail and daylight shows through the perpends. Brick faces that have begun to flake after a hard winter, nearly always on the elevation that takes the weather. And a wall onto one of the lanes that has gone out of plumb, lost its coping, or been clipped by something turning.
None of those are emergencies and none of them get better on their own. Water sits in an open joint, freezes, and takes a little more of the wall with it every winter. We come out, look at the whole elevation rather than the patch you happened to notice, and tell you straight whether it is a morning's work, one proper repointing job, or something moving underneath that wants sorting first. The site visit and the written quote are both free.
The work
The brickwork jobs we do around Cadnam and Bartley
Two different walls. Close to a quarter of what stands in the two villages went up before 1919: solid walls of handmade brick bedded in lime, built to let water back out through the joint. Cement pointing on a wall like that shuts the escape route and you get spalling on the face at the first hard frost, so we rake out by hand to roughly twice the joint width, never with a disc cutter, and repoint in an NHL lime mortar with the sand matched to what came out. You see a sample panel in daylight before the rest goes ahead. Most of the two villages is later than that, detached houses and bungalows from the 1950s onwards with a brick outer skin and blockwork behind it, and those joints fail in a different pattern: they open at the exposed corners and along the top course under the verge, and a south west gable can run twenty years ahead of the rest of the house. That is one elevation to price, not a whole property.
Walls onto the lanes. The commonest job on this patch. Walls fronting the lanes and the forest verges take knocks from traffic, roots and stock, and plenty were built with no damp proof course, so they draw water up and lose the bottom three courses first. We rebuild bowed sections, reset or renew coping, and put in gate piers tied to something rather than balanced on the end of a wall. Where faces have blown, pointing on its own puts a neat frame round the damage, so failed bricks are cut out and replaced, which on the older cottages means reclaimed or handmade stock and takes longer to source than to lay. Stacks come off a scaffold and the platform is a line in the quote. Anything structural goes through building control rather than round it.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Thomas prices it himself, and the quote itemises access, raking out, the mix, each elevation and any brick replacement. Cadnam and Bartley sit inside the New Forest National Park, so permission is settled by the Authority rather than a district council, and scrutiny on anything visible from a lane is real. Neither village has its own conservation area, but there are ten listed entries between them, and on a listed building repointing is alteration and needs consent before a joint is opened. Check your own address on the National Park Authority's interactive property map, and read National Park heritage and conservation guidance on what the Authority expects. Where a wall is shared with next door, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 may bite.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
There is no rate per square metre, because the area tells you nothing until you know what the joints are like. A detached house set well back off the lane, a bungalow with low eaves and a roadside cottage are three different set ups. The platform is a priced line rather than a favour, under work at height rules. Raking out by hand is slow, and the depth of the rake decides the hours more than the area. Comparing quotes, ask the rake depth, hand or disc, the mix, the brick count and the scaffold.
If something has moved
Loose brickwork, or a wall that has shifted
Ring rather than use the form. Anything overhead or leaning jumps the queue: a chimney that has moved, a parapet, a garden wall pushed out by roots or a vehicle. Out this way it is usually a boundary wall on a lane that something has caught, or a stack that has shifted in a gale. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
Ground that shrinks and swells, and cracks that come and go
The ground under Cadnam and Bartley is cohesive and it changes volume with the seasons. It swells when it is wet and shrinks back when it dries out, and a brick wall sitting on it moves with it. What you see is a crack that opens through a dry August and has closed up again by February, usually stepping diagonally through the joints out of the corner of a window, a door head or a bay.
That pattern is worth recognising, because it changes what you should do. A crack that moves with the weather is a ground story, not a pointing story, and filling it in the summer only means it splits again the following year.
The useful work is nearly always about water rather than brick. Get rainwater away from the footing: a downpipe emptying onto a border beside the wall, a soakaway sited too close to the house, or a silted gully will all keep the ground next to a foundation wetter than the ground beneath it, and that difference is what does the moving. Approved Document H sets out where surface water is supposed to end up.
Mature trees on these plots take a lot out of the ground in a dry summer, and removing one can be as unhelpful as planting it, because the ground then swells back over several years. If we think a crack wants watching for a season before anyone touches it, we will tell you that, even though it means we do not get the work this month.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
Cadnam and Bartley are about twenty miles from the yard, so we work this side in planned blocks rather than dashing in and out twice a day, and the SO40 villages around it, Copythorne, Winsor, Ashurst and Netley Marsh, get covered on the same run.
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
Cadnam and Bartley questions we get asked
No conservation area here. Does the National Park still matter?
It matters more, not less. Cadnam and Bartley has no conservation area of its own, but the whole settlement sits under the New Forest National Park Authority, which applies design scrutiny to anything visible. For a like for like repoint that is no obstacle at all. It becomes one when you want a different brick, a different colour or a new opening. There are 10 listed entries here as well, so the address is worth checking.
What does the survey cover on a wall with no cavity?
The joint first, then everything around it. Just under a quarter of the housing in Cadnam and Bartley predates 1919, and those are solid walls, so we check how far back the mortar has gone with a rake test, whether the brick faces are spalling, what the cills and the plinth are doing, and where rainwater lands. A joint soft all the way through is a different job from one weathered on the surface.
Does adding a bedroom here bring in the Solent catchment?
It can. This sits inside the Solent nutrient neutrality catchment, which covers Solent Maritime and the harbour designations, and it engages where a scheme adds overnight accommodation. A loft conversion or an extension with a new bedroom is caught by it. Repointing, a rebuilt wall, a chimney repair or a re-roof is not, because nothing extra sleeps in the house afterwards. Raise it at the drawing stage rather than later.
When in the year is outside pointing easiest?
Spring to autumn, and we keep new work well away from frost. Fresh mortar has to be kept off freezing nights and out of driving rain for its first few days, so in a wet January more of the day goes on sheeting than on pointing. Cadnam and Bartley is 19.5 miles from the yard, so work here runs in blocks rather than odd half days, which makes an early booking worth having.
Can inter-war brickwork be pointed the same as post-war?
Not usually, and there is a lot of inter-war stock here at 19.1%. Those walls are early cavity or solid, laid in a soft lime or a weak gauged mortar, and a modern strong mix put back into them will shed brick faces within a few winters. The post-war houses take a gauged mix without complaint. We work out which we are standing in front of before mixing anything, because it is not easily undone.
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