Bricklaying and repointing in Hyde

Base courses, and walls standing in wet ground. This is the most common repair here. Huckles Brook runs a few hundred metres off, the surface water risk across Hyde is high, and where ground water sits against a wall, or the ground level has crept up over the years, the bottom of the brickwork never dries out. The mortar in those joints turns soft and sandy, white salts appear on the face, and the first hard frost takes the faces off. The fix is not more pointing. It is getting the levels back down, giving the water somewhere to run, then rebuilding the affected courses in a frost resistant brick on a sulphate resisting mix, with a damp proof course where one can be worked in.

Where the wall is solid and the brick soft and handmade, it only works if it can breathe. That means NHL lime and sharp sand, with no cement anywhere in the mix, raked and pointed to the profile the wall already carries. A good deal of what we are asked to look at was pointed in hard cement decades ago and now pushes moisture out through the brick instead of the joint. Taking that cement out without damaging the arris of a soft period brick is slow, careful work and it is the part of the job worth paying for.

Then there are the stables, stores and field shelters: single skin brickwork, brick piers carrying a roof plate, and timber lintels over the openings that have rotted where the wall stayed wet. Widening a doorway, rebuilding a gable end, replacing a pier clipped by a trailer, taking a wall down to a sound course. All of it depends on what the footing is doing, which is why we dig a hole rather than quote off a photograph.

A stack is exposed on all four sides and gets no shelter at all, so it is usually first to need repointing, along with new flaunching around the pots once the old bed has cracked. Access is most of a stack job, so the pointing, the flaunching and any frost damaged brick in the top courses are worth doing in one visit. Long walls beside the lanes, gate piers and retaining brickwork where the ground steps get the same treatment: a foundation dug to firm ground, proper footings, a dpc, and a coping that throws water clear of the face. Part of Hyde falls inside the Western Escarpment conservation area, so on anything visible the brick and the mortar are agreed off a sample before we start.

No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you see the joints. Somewhere a van can pull onto hard standing, somewhere every barrow crosses a lawn, and a stack needing a scaffold to the ridge are three prices. 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.

We cover Hyde, Frogham, Gorley, Ogdens, Godshill and Fordingbridge, SP6. 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.