Bricklaying and repointing in Everton
Repointing, wall tie repairs and new brickwork across Everton and the SO41 lanes, reached off a tower where the house is single storey.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Access is the good news on most Everton brickwork. What we are asked to look at is nearly all single storey, and a whole bungalow elevation is within reach of a tower. So the wall is priced without a full scaffold and it gets done in one run, rather than patched in two halves years apart.
Three things bring people to ring. Joints on the weather side that have eroded back until the sand runs out of them when you brush past. A crack running level along a bed joint and repeating every few courses up the wall, which is almost always corroded wall ties rather than the house moving. And a boundary wall or garage that has taken a knock from a vehicle.
The first two are the ones people leave. An open joint on the seaward face lets driven rain into a wall that then has nowhere to put it, and a tie that has started to rust keeps swelling until the outer skin lifts. Both are far cheaper caught early. We come out, survey the elevations properly rather than the one you rang about, and put an itemised written price on paper.
The work
The jobs we do most on the bungalows here
Bungalow elevations. Bungalows are nearly 42 per cent of the housing here and the bulk of the village is post-war, peaking in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the facing brick laid in a gauged sand and cement. What has happened is erosion rather than decay: wind and rain have taken the joint back behind the face of the brick. We rake out to sound mortar, hand work anything soft and every perp joint, refill in lifts, and strike the joint back the way it was built, normally bucket handle and sometimes weather struck. Off a tower, a whole elevation of a bungalow is a straightforward run of work.
Ties, and the ground level. Cavity walls of this age were built with mild steel ties, and two and a half kilometres from the coast the air in that cavity is salt laden. A rusting tie swells and lifts the outer skin, which shows as horizontal cracking repeating at regular courses, most obviously on the gable, and that regular spacing is how you tell it apart from structural movement, which wanders. The fix is replacement ties resin fixed through the outer leaf, the holes made good and the lifted courses cut out and rebuilt. A bungalow also spreads a lot of wall close to the ground, and over the years patios and paths get relaid and beds built up until they sit above the damp proof course. Water then goes into the brick above it, and frost takes the faces off. We cut out and replace the spalling bricks with a matched reclaimed brick, and we tell you where the ground level has to come back down, because replacing the brick without doing that is a repair with a date on it.
Roadside boundary walls along the village take the traffic and the salt: copings lift, gate piers get clipped, and single skin garage walls crack where there is no pier to stiffen them. Short sections are rebuilt off the existing footing, longer ones off a new one, and the coping goes back with a weathering so the top of the wall sheds rather than soaks. New work is porches, sun room dwarf walls, extensions and filling in a garage door opening: blockwork inner leaf, insulated cavity, stainless ties, DPC and weep holes at the base, and the outer skin toothed into the existing stretcher bond rather than butted against it. Matching a nineteen sixties facing brick is the part that takes the time, so we source it and put up a sample panel before the elevation goes up.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Thomas comes out and prices it himself, and the quote is itemised: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines. Everton sits outside the New Forest National Park boundary, which runs a couple of miles up the road, and New Forest District Council is the planning authority for the village. People ask, reasonably, and the Authority's interactive property map settles it in a minute. Nothing about a normal repoint or brick repair needs permission. A listed building is the exception wherever it stands, and there are fifteen listed entries in the parish, out towards the Efford and Newlands side.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
We do not price brickwork by the square metre. The joints decide it, not the area. A single storey elevation off a tower, a two storey gable on one of the newer closes and a wall on the main road are three different jobs. 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. 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. Here it is most often a roadside boundary wall that has been hit, or a stack after a gale, and the first visit makes it safe. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The local part
What a village of bungalows changes about a brickwork price
More than four in ten homes in Everton are bungalows, and that changes the shape of a brickwork job more than people expect. All of a single storey elevation is reachable from a tower or a low platform, so access is a smaller line on the quote than it would be on a two storey house, and there is no sense in doing half a wall now and the rest in two years when the platform is already there.
It also spreads the brickwork out rather than stacking it up. A bungalow has more external corners and far more wall near the ground for the same floor area, and both of those are where the hours in a repoint actually go.
Wall close to the ground is wall that gets wet. Ground levels, beds and paths matter here more than they would on a two storey house, because anything sitting above the damp proof course feeds water straight into the brickwork and the joints below it.
The exposed face is the south west one and the sea is under two miles away, so that elevation weathers first and hardest. If the budget only stretches to part of the house this year, do that side, do all of it, and leave the sheltered elevations until they need it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Everton, Milford on Sea, Hordle, Lymington, New Milton and the SO41 addresses, with New Forest District Council for planning and building control. 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
Everton questions we get asked
Is a tower enough on a single storey house here?
Usually, for the walls. Everton is 41.7% bungalows, so most elevations can be worked off a tower or a low system frame that goes up in a morning, and the mixer stays at ground level beside the work instead of being lifted about. Wall heads, verges and anything over a conservatory still want a proper platform. Whichever it turns out to be appears as its own line on the written quote.
There is rust staining running down the brickwork. What is it?
Iron in the wall corroding, and this close to the sea it starts sooner. Everton is 2.6km from the coast, so salt lands on the brickwork, keeps it damp between showers and gets into the joints, where it attacks wall ties, lintel bearings and any strap built into the mortar. The stain shows first. Rust takes up more space than the metal did, so a level crack tends to follow it.
Everton is New Forest District, not the National Park. Does that matter?
It changes who you deal with if consent is ever needed. Everton sits under New Forest District rather than the National Park Authority, which is a genuine difference from villages a few miles inland, and there is no conservation area over the settlement. Repointing and brick repair are maintenance under either. The 15 listed entries here, Efford House among them, are the exception, and those need consent whoever the authority is.
Is patching a 1960s bungalow wall worth doing?
Generally it is. Just under half of Everton went up between 1945 and 1982, with the biggest cohort in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so those walls have carried one mortar for a very long time and it gives way at the exposed edges rather than everywhere at once. Patching hollow bands around the verge, the corners and the openings is normal work here. A full wrap is only worth it when whole panels have gone.
Do you use a different sand this close to the coast?
The sand is chosen to match the existing joint, so that does not change much. What does change near the coast is anything metal going back into the wall, because salt in the air is what shortens its life, so replacement ties, cramps and beads are specified to suit rather than picked off the shelf. We also keep the mix a little richer at exposed edges so the joint sets before it gets soaked.
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Bricklaying and repointing near Everton
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Get a written price for your Everton brickwork
Send the postcode and a photograph of the elevation you are worried about. The site visit is free, the quote is itemised, and Thomas comes out to price it himself.