Bricklaying at Merritown
Repointing, brick replacement, damp bottom courses, barn and boundary walls at Merritown and around Hurn.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
The work
Brickwork at Merritown: what we do, and where walls fail here
Brickwork around Merritown fails from the bottom up rather than the top down. The ground is flat and it stays wet, so the lowest courses of a wall are the ones that go soft, blow their faces and lose their mortar first. We cut out and replace what has gone, repoint in a mix that lets the wall dry out again, and sort out what is keeping it wet in the first place.
Walls at Merritown mostly fail at the base, in the garden walls and on the weather side. A band of crumbling brick and open joints along the bottom metre of a wall, often with white salting on the face. A garden or yard wall that has leaned or bowed, because there is no damp proof course in it and the footing sits in ground that holds water. And the ordinary weather jobs: joints raked back by wind and rain on the exposed side, cracked flaunching on a stack, a crack over an opening.
We come and look at the wall and at the ground it stands in, which out in Merritown is the half of the job most quotes leave out. You get a straight answer on whether it is pointing, damp or movement, and an itemised written price if you want one. The site visit and the quote are free.
The work
Brickwork jobs around Merritown
Rebuilding the bottom courses. The repair wet walls here tend to need. Where a wall has stood wet for years the brick faces spall off, the mortar goes back to sand and you can rake a joint out with a finger. Pointing over that is a waste.
We cut out the failed brick, replace it with matched stock, reclaimed or handmade where the wall is old enough to want it, and rebed the course properly, putting a damp proof course in while the wall is open where it will take one. On solid wall brickwork with no cavity the joint is the only route water has back out, which is why we repoint the older walls in Merritown in an NHL lime mix rather than a hard cement one, raked by hand and never with a disc cutter. On the modern cavity walls a cement mix is right, matched for colour by picking the sand.
Barns, yard walls and stacks. A lot of the brickwork around Merritown is not a house. Single skin walls with piers, old stores, stables and farm buildings, generally with no cavity, no damp proof course and a footing that was never much more than a wide first course. We repair, stitch and rebuild sections of these, and will tell you honestly when a wall has gone far enough that a rebuild costs less than patching it twice. Boundary walls along the lanes take knocks from anything farm sized and gate piers get leaned on by gates that have dropped, so we rebuild bowed lengths, reset coping and bond piers in. Flat ground and no shelter means a stack takes wind from every side: cracked flaunching lets water into the head and eventually the stack moves. On this ground the footing decides whether new work is still straight in ten years.
How it runs
Brickwork repairs here: from survey to clean-up
Thomas comes out, looks at the wall with you and prices it himself. The quote is broken down by elevation or by wall: access, taking down any loose brickwork, new or reclaimed bricks, the mortar, the rebuild, and taking the rubble away.
A garden or boundary wall needs no platform. A gable or a chimney stack needs a scaffold, and on soft ground its base goes on boards. Bricks are stacked on your drive, not your lawn, and the site is swept each evening. Before we build, we mix small trial panels so you can see the mortar colour against your old brick once it has dried. If something hidden shows up, such as a lintel that has rusted through or a wall with no footing to speak of, the work stops while you look at the photograph and the extra price.
Merritown is not in a conservation area. Hurn has its own a short way off, and the council keeps the list if you are unsure. On a listed building, repointing or rebuilding counts as alteration and needs consent first. Elsewhere repair needs no application, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls explains where a change of appearance begins. Structural work goes to building control, and a shared wall brings in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
Cost
Why a wall repair costs what it does
A rate per square metre would not tell you much. The same area of wall can be a day or a week.
How high it is. A garden wall is worked from the ground. A gable, a chimney stack or anything above the first floor needs scaffold, and under the work at height rules the platform is priced by how long it stands as well as its size. If the lorry cannot get close along a narrow lane or drive, tubes and boards are carried in by hand.
Finding the brick. Matching an old brick means sourcing reclaimed stock or a close modern match, and that can take time. Trial panels of mortar come first, so the colour and the strength are right before a course is laid.
Why it moved. A wall pushed over by a root, or undermined where water has run off a drive, needs the cause dealt with before it is rebuilt. With a high surface water rating around Merritown, a footing sitting in wet ground is worth checking before new brickwork goes on top of it.
The weather side. The south west face takes the driven rain, so joints and bricks there tend to be in worse shape than the sheltered side.
When you compare quotes, ask: how deep are the joints raked out, by hand or with a disc? Are the bricks reclaimed or new? Is the scaffold in the price?
If something has moved
A wall leaning, or bricks coming loose
Call, do not use the form. A wall that has started to lean, bricks falling off a chimney, or a gable with an open crack is a safety matter first. Keep people and cars away from anything that could come down.
The first visit makes it safe, whether that means propping, taking down loose courses or fencing it off, and the permanent repair is priced once we know how far the movement goes. We carry out planned work Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Nobody answering means we are on a job, and we will be back on the phone to you as soon as we can.
The one local thing
The ground stays wet, and that decides how a wall is repaired
Merritown sits low and flat on the gravel between the Moors River and the airport, and the ground here is naturally wet rather than free draining. Surface water has almost no fall to run away down, and the water table comes up in winter.
Brickwork does not mind rain. It minds standing wet, month after month, because water carries salts through the brick and they crystallise behind the face and lift it off, and because mortar that never dries loses its strength.
That is why walls out in Merritown fail in a band along the bottom while the same wall at eye level is perfectly sound. Part of the address sits in the middle flood zone as well, and the government flood risk service will tell you what applies to a particular property.
What that changes is the order of the work, and it is worth checking before you have anyone quote. Look at where the ground sits against the wall: soil, a raised border, a new path or a drive laid over the old one will often have buried the damp proof course, and once that is bridged the wall drinks. Lowering the ground back below it, or digging a gravel channel along the wall, does more good than any amount of pointing.
Then look at where the rainwater goes, because a downpipe emptying at the foot of a wall or a gully that has stopped taking keeps one patch permanently wet, and Approved Document H covers where surface water is allowed to go. Do those two, then repoint, and repoint in a mortar softer than the brick rather than a hard cement one that traps the water in and moves the damage into the brick face. That order is what makes the repair last out in Merritown.
Who you are dealing with
The bricklayers you would be hiring
From our base in Boscombe, Merritown is 3.6 miles, off the Hurn road in BH23. We also cover Sopley, Hurn and Parley, and on into Christchurch. Your council is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. Before you book a visit in Merritown, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
It belongs to Thomas Hannen, who comes out to your wall and works out the price himself. A Checkatrade customer, verified by them, scored our work 10 out of 10. There is no fee for the visit, and none for the written quote, which itemises each part of the job.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Merritown?
Most repairs in Merritown 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.
| Question | In Merritown |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Merritown. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Merritown, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Merritown. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Merritown. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in Merritown
Why is the bottom of our wall always wet?
Surface water rather than rising damp, more often than not. Merritown sits in flood zone 2 with a high surface water band, so run off gathers and stands against the base of a wall in a downpour even with the Moors most of a kilometre away. The bottom courses stay saturated and frost then takes the joint faces off. Levels and drainage come before any pointing.
Should the lower courses get a different mix?
Yes, softer than the rest. The base of a wall in Hurn stays wet longest, and a hard cement joint down there traps the water in the brick so the frost lifts the face instead of the mortar. A mix weaker than the brick gives way first and can be cut out again later. Higher up, where the wall dries between showers, a stronger mix causes no trouble.
Can you repair the brickwork on a barn or a stable block?
We do that work. An agricultural building is usually a single skin with wide joints and no cavity, so it behaves more like a garden wall than a house and it wants a mix that suits soft old brick. Access is normally easier than on a dwelling and a tower will reach most of it. There is no conservation area at Merritown itself, the Hurn one being about 1.3 km off, so a straight repair to an unlisted building needs nothing from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council.
What can we look at ourselves before you visit?
Give the bottom metre of each wall a look after a wet week. Green staining, a tide mark, or mortar you can rub away with a thumb tells you that band is holding water, which is the usual pattern around Hurn where the surface water band is high. Then look up at the verge and the cills. Note the worst elevation and we will start there.
What will the written quote actually list?
The elevations by name, the depth we are raking back to, the mix, the access allowance and the disposal. It sets out which sections are being done now and which are deliberately being left, so nothing is hidden inside a single line. Thomas Hannen writes it after walking the wall himself, and at 3.6 miles from our base Merritown is an easy call to make.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying near Merritown
Nearby places we also cover for bricklaying, with straight-line distances from Merritown, and the other trades we offer in Merritown itself.
Bricklaying nearby
Our other trades in Merritown
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Free quote
Get the wall and the ground looked at
Tell us which wall it is and how long it has been like that. We will come out, look at the ground as well as the brickwork, and put an itemised written price in your hand.