Bricklaying in Fordingbridge

The older streets. The frontages in the middle of town are solid brick with no cavity, often in Flemish bond, and a lot of the brick is soft and handmade. The joints come out by hand with a hacking iron and a plugging chisel.

A grinder on brick like that takes the arris off and there is no putting it back. We rake to about twice the width of the joint, damp the wall and fill in lifts with NHL 3.5 lime and a sharp sand, kept weaker than the brick. The joint goes back flush or slightly recessed, because a proud joint on soft brick sheds the water onto the face.

Sweatfords Water runs through Fordingbridge with the Avon alongside it, and walls on the low ground stay wet at the base for months. That shows as salts drying out white, soft crumbling mortar and frost spalling the brick faces in the bottom courses. Blown bricks are cut out and replaced with reclaimed brick of the same size, pointed in something soft. What we will not do is render a cement skirt round the base to tidy it up, which traps the water and moves the damage further up the wall.

Tall stacks on the older terraces take weather from every side, so the flaunching cracks, the pots work loose and the joints go long before anything else. Repointing above the roof line off a scaffold covers most of it, and where the top courses have gone soft they come off and go back. Yard walls, walls along the river paths and anything holding a level change need weep holes and drainage behind them, or the water finds the joints instead. Copings go back brick-on-edge with a weathering, and gate piers are rebuilt plumb off their footing.

The estates. Four in ten homes in Fordingbridge went up between 1945 and 1982, cavity built with a blockwork inner leaf, a facing brick outer skin in stretcher bond and mild steel wall ties. Horizontal cracking repeating at regular courses is tie failure, and it is repaired with replacement ties resin fixed through the outer leaf. Then it is lintels, garage openings, porches and extensions, with the new brick shown to you as a sample panel before an elevation goes up. Bowed fronts and stepped cracking at a corner take helical stitching, or cutting out and rebuilding off a sound foundation. Where the cause is the ground rather than the brickwork, that wants a structural engineer before anybody quotes, and we will say so rather than sell you pointing.

The size of a wall tells you little about the price; the state of its joints tells you a lot.

Which wall. A pavement frontage in the old streets, a chimney stack on a seventies semi and a garden wall behind a bungalow each need a different set up. A stack or a two storey gable needs scaffold, and the longer it stands, the more it costs. The HSE rules on roof work are why the platform is shown separately, and a terrace frontage on the pavement adds a licence.

Joint depth. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick it is the only safe way, because a grinder chips the arrises. Deeply eroded joints or faces that have spalled set the hours far more than the area does, so joint depth is the first thing measured.

Matching. An estate brick can usually be matched at a builders' merchant. An old town centre brick may need reclaimed stock, and a lime mix is tried in trial panels until the colour and texture sit right against the old work.

Damp at the base. On the low ground near the Avon a garden wall can stay wet at the bottom, and the lowest courses may need rebuilding rather than repointing.

Put these to any other bricklayer: how deep will you rake, will it be by hand or with a grinder, which mortar will you use, and is the scaffold included?

We are based in Boscombe, 14.1 miles from Fordingbridge, and we take on brickwork in the town and in Sandleheath, Alderholt, Breamore, Rockbourne and the other SP6 villages along the Avon. The town's planning and building control are both with New Forest District Council.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the company, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen, whose business it is, comes to see the wall and prices it himself. A customer verified by Checkatrade rated us 10 out of 10. No charge is made for the site visit, and none for the written quote with every item listed. Before you book a visit in Fordingbridge, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Fordingbridge 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.