Bricklaying 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.

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Access is the good news on most Everton brickwork. Much of the housing here is 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.

Everton brickwork shows wear at the weather-side joints, at the wall ties and wherever a vehicle has caught it. 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, not 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, not the one you rang about, and put an itemised written price on paper.

The work

What the bungalows here tend to need

Newly built brick corner with a moulded plinth course and airbrick, laid to match existing (illustrative photo for brickwork in Everton)
Matched to what is thereBond, plinth course and airbrick picked up from the original. Illustrative photo.

Bungalow elevations. Bungalows are a big part of the housing here and the bulk of Everton is post-war, with the facing brick laid in a gauged sand and cement. What has happened is erosion, not 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 in Everton 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, not 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

Brick repairs and rebuilt walls, from quote to clean-up

Single storey rear extension in matching red brick with the window opening formed and the roof edge on (one of our own jobs, shown for brickwork in Everton)
New brickwork, matchedOpenings formed and the coursing carried through to match. Photo from one of our own jobs.

Thomas comes out and prices it himself. He looks at the brick, the mortar and what has caused the damage, whether that is a root, a vehicle, a leaking gutter or frost. The written quote is itemised: access, taking down or cutting out, new bricks, the mortar mix and any raking out, each elevation by area, and disposal. Every brick of it comes under one company.

Much of the brickwork in Everton is on bungalows and garden walls, so most of it is worked from the ground, trestles or a tower, not a full scaffold. A chimney stack or a two storey gable is the exception. We match the brick as closely as we can from reclaimed or current stock, and match the mortar to the brick, with lime on pre-1919 walls. Rubble and old bricks leave with us, and the ground is swept at the end of every day. If we open a wall and find a cracked lintel or a failed wall tie, you see a photograph of it and a written price before we go further.

Everton sits outside the National Park, and New Forest District Council is the planning authority. The Authority's interactive property map settles which side of the boundary an address falls. A normal repair needs no permission. A listed building needs consent wherever it stands, and the listed entries in the parish lie out towards Efford and Newlands.

Cost

Joints, bricks and platforms: pricing brickwork

Repointing a brick wall by hand, mortar being struck into a raked-out joint (illustrative photo for brickwork in Everton)
Joints filled by handRaked out to depth, then filled and struck one joint at a time. Illustrative photo.

We do not price brickwork by the square metre. The joints, the bricks and the reach decide it. The platform. A single storey elevation comes off a tower. A two storey gable on one of the newer closes needs a scaffold, and a stack wants one built around it. The platform is a priced line under work at height rules.

How deep the damage goes. Hand raking takes time, and how deep the joints have gone matters more to the hours than how big the wall is. Spalled bricks have to be cut out one at a time and new ones toothed in.

Finding a match. The older cottages and the post-war bungalows use very different bricks. A close match from reclaimed stock can take time to source, and that shows in the price.

What caused it. The ground in this area is clay that shrinks in dry summers and swells in wet winters. If a crack comes from ground movement, or a downpipe is soaking a footing, fixing the brick without fixing the cause wastes your money. Roots near a garden wall are the same.

Boundary walls. A roadside wall that has been hit may need taking down to a sound course and rebuilding on the old footing, or on a new one.

When you compare, ask how deep the joints are raked and whether by hand or disc, what mix goes in, how many bricks are replaced, and whether the scaffold is included.

If something has moved

A wall that has moved, cracked or been hit

Phone us rather than use the form. Anything leaning or overhead comes first: a stack moving after a gale, a parapet, or a garden wall pushed out by roots or clipped by a car. Keep people and cars away from it.

If a roadside wall is leaning over the pavement, put something across the path to warn passers-by. The first visit makes it safe, by taking down loose brick or propping what is left, and then we price the proper repair. Brickwork is booked Monday to Friday from 8am until 6pm. If you cannot get through, expect a call back as soon as we are free.

Call now: 07435 839745

The local part

What a village of bungalows changes about a brickwork price

Repointing a red brick pier, raked-out joints being filled with fresh mortar (one of our own jobs, shown for brickwork in Everton)
Raked out by handA disc widens the joint and takes the edge off a soft brick. Photo from one of our own jobs.

Bungalows are common in Everton, 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 instead of 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 more on an Everton bungalow 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

Who rebuilds your garden wall or stack

Everton, 10.8 miles from our Boscombe base, is part of Hordle parish, and we cover it together with Hordle itself, Milford on Sea and New Milton. For planning and building control the council is New Forest District.

Our company, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, is registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719. It belongs to Thomas Hannen, who looks at the wall and puts a price on it himself. A verified customer has marked us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit and the written, itemised quote are both free of charge. Before you book a visit in Everton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Planning at a glance

Do you need planning permission in Everton?

Most repairs in Everton 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.

The planning position in Everton, from council and national records.
Question In Everton
Who decides New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Everton. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls.
Conservation area None covers Everton, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance.
Listed buildings Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Everton. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent.
Protected landscape No National Park or National Landscape covers Everton.

Questions

Questions about bricklaying in Everton

Is a tower enough on a single storey house here?

Usually, for the walls. Bungalows are a big part of Everton, 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 instead of 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. A lot of Everton went up between 1945 and 1982, so those walls have carried one mortar for a very long time and it gives way at the exposed edges, not 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.

Nearby, and next door

Bricklaying near Everton

Free quote

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.