Bricklaying and repointing in Holt
Repointing, brick repairs, outbuildings, boundary walls and new brickwork around Holt. We find out what the wall is built of before we price it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Two houses next door to each other in Holt can need two completely different mortars. Get that wrong and the pointing takes the brick with it, so the first thing we do is find out what the wall is actually built of.
Out here the calls are rarely about the front of the house. It is an outbuilding whose gable has started to lean. A run of wall beside the lane that has lost half its joints and a few bricks with them. A stack you can see daylight through from the garden. Or somebody has bought a place with a yard of brick buildings and wants to know which of them are worth saving.
Those are all jobs where the answer depends on the footing and the mortar rather than on how the wall looks, so we come out and dig a bit, scrape a joint, and check what is holding it up. Then you get a written itemised price with the work broken down, so you can do it in the order that makes sense rather than all at once.
The work
The brickwork we are called to in Holt
Outbuildings, barns and old yard walls. There is a lot of working brickwork around Holt that was never built to house standard: single skin outbuildings, stores, old stable ranges and yard walls, put up on very little foundation. At the bottom the brick has been drawing water out of the ground for a century, so the base courses blow. At the top the coping has gone and water runs straight into the wall head. Rebuilding a gable, taking a wall down to a sound course or putting a proper coping on it are the jobs that stop the rest going.
Long runs of wall along the lanes take everything: a wing mirror, a delivery lorry, tree roots lifting from one side and a bank pushing from the other. A wall bowed past a certain point cannot be pushed back. It comes down, the bricks worth keeping are cleaned off, and it goes back up off a new footing with a dpc, in the same bond, with piers and a coping bedded to shed water. Where a gate pier has dropped it is the foundation under it rather than the pier, and this ground shrinks and swells, so where rainwater goes beside that footing is structural, not just damp.
Telling the two kinds of wall apart. An old cottage here is likely to be solid wall in soft brick, and it wants NHL lime and sharp sand with no cement in it, so the wall dries through the joint. The newer houses along the same lane are cavity in a gauged sand and cement mortar, matched to what is there. Point a period wall in that mix and the moisture leaves through the brick and the faces spall. Stepped cracking from a corner means the ground has moved, horizontal cracking every few courses means wall ties, a straight crack over a wide window means the lintel, and we say which we think it is.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from the first visit to the last, one person to ring, and the quote itemised: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines. Repointing in the same materials is repair. Forming a new opening, taking out a load bearing wall or putting in a lintel is building control work. Holt has 13 listed entries dotted around it, and listed building consent from Dorset Council is needed before any joint on one is raked, which covers garden walls and outbuildings in the curtilage as well as the house. The village has no conservation area of its own. A shared wall brings in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, and other permissions you may require is worth reading before you commit to anything new.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you see the joints. A stack on a two storey house, an outbuilding you work off a tower and a wall beside a field gate price very differently. How long the platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line. Raking by hand is slow, so joint depth and spalled faces decide the hours, and matching a mortar or sourcing a brick takes trial panels. Ask how deep joints are raked, by hand or disc, and whether the scaffold is in.
If something has moved
Loose brickwork, or a wall that has shifted
Ring rather than use the form. Anything overhead or leaning goes to the front of the queue. Out here it is usually a wall beside a lane or a stack with a crack through it, and we would rather come and make that safe first and price the rest properly afterwards. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Green Belt changes nothing about a repair, and a lot about a new wall
Holt sits in the Green Belt, and that trips people up in one direction only. It has no bearing at all on repair. Repointing, cutting out spalled brick, taking a leaning wall down and rebuilding it on the same line, to the same height, in the same materials, is maintenance rather than development, and nobody needs to apply for anything. If a builder tells you a repointing job here needs permission, that is wrong.
Where it does bite is anything new or anything bigger. Green Belt policy is tighter than most places on new buildings and on adding footprint, so a garden room, a workshop or an extension is a planning question before it is a bricklaying question, and the answer is worth having before you pay anyone to draw it. Walls have their own rules on top of that.
As a general limit a new wall can go up to two metres, dropping to one metre where it runs alongside a road used by vehicles, which is exactly the situation for most frontages along the lanes here. Planning Portal guidance on fences, gates and garden walls sets out where those limits sit. So if you want the wall back taller than it was, ask first. If you want it back as it stands, we can just build it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Holt, Broom Hill, Furzehill, Mannington, Colehill and the lanes out towards Three Legged Cross, all BH21. 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
Holt questions we get asked
Why does our wall only fail near the ground?
Because that is where the water lingers. Around Holt the ground is cohesive with impeded drainage, so rain running off a hard surface or out of a downpipe soaks away slowly and keeps the base of a wall wet for days after it has stopped. Salts travel up through the joint, crystallise behind the face and turn the mortar to sand. Dropping the ground level and taking the water elsewhere usually matters more than the pointing that goes back in.
Do we need building control to knock through externally?
For a new or widened opening in a load bearing wall, yes. Dorset Council building control wants to see the beam and its bearings, and that notice goes in before the wall is cut rather than after somebody spots the steel. Repointing, rebuilding a garden wall on its existing line and swapping out spalled bricks are all repair and sit outside it. If yours is one of the 13 listed entries in the Holt area, consent is separate and comes first.
Does radon here affect building a garden room?
It affects a conversion or a new room, not a repair. Holt falls in a band where roughly 3 to 5 per cent of properties sit above the action level, so basic radon protection is designed into new habitable floors, normally a membrane with a sealed perimeter. Repointing, rebuilding a wall or replacing a lintel does not engage it at all. Tell us at the survey if an outbuilding is becoming a room somebody works or sleeps in, so the floor is detailed properly.
Can we rebuild the old wall exactly as it stands?
If it is coming down anyway, putting it back on the same line at the same height is repair rather than development. Sound bricks come off, get cleaned and go back with the weathered faces outwards so the finished wall does not shout new. The footing is the part worth spending on around Holt, because seasonal swelling and shrinking is what leans a wall built off nothing. Dorset Council only gets involved if you go higher or closer to the highway.
Do you clear the old brick and rubble away?
It leaves with us. A rebuilt wall on a Holt plot throws up more spoil than owners expect, mostly broken brick and spent mortar, and that gets bagged or skipped and taken off rather than heaped behind a shed. Anything sound is set aside first for reuse in the same wall. Access out here is often a narrow side gate, so the barrow route is agreed and sheeted before the first course comes down.
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Bricklaying and repointing near Holt
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Get a price for your brickwork in Holt
Tell us the address and what has started moving. We will come out, scrape a joint and put an itemised price in writing. Free site visit, no obligation.