Bricklaying in Milford on Sea

The seaward elevations. Most of the village went up between the 1950s and the early 1980s, built as a brick outer skin in stretcher bond with blockwork behind and a cavity between the two.

On any street running down towards the cliff, the south and west walls lose their pointing decades before the sheltered elevations do. We rake the joints back to sound mortar by hand, match the mix, the sand and the colour, and finish bucket handle or weather struck rather than flush, so rain is thrown off the joint instead of sitting on a little ledge. On the older brick and flint round the green we use a soft NHL lime instead, because a solid wall has to stay breathable and cement pointing simply pushes the damage into the brick face.

Two skins are only a wall while the ties across the cavity are still doing their job. On houses of this period they are galvanised steel, and less than a kilometre from the water they corrode from the outer end inwards. As they corrode they swell, lifting the outer skin a fraction at every tie, which is the regular horizontal cracking people describe as a stripe up the gable. Remedial ties go in from outside without taking the wall down, and the holes are made good in matched mortar.

Flats and communal brickwork. A quarter of the homes in Milford on Sea are flats, and a good number of those look straight out over Christchurch Bay. The work is parapets, balcony fronts, the brick panels between windows and the pointing on the exposed corners, and we price it for management companies and residents' associations as readily as for a single owner. If you are a leaseholder, major works are usually subject to consultation under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, so ask your freeholder where that process has got to before anyone books a scaffold.

The walls round the green and along the lanes towards Keyhaven are mostly flint with brick quoins and lacing courses, and almost none of them have a damp proof course. They draw water up, the bottom courses go soft and spalling starts there. We rebuild bowed and leaning lengths on a proper footing, put a DPC in where the wall allows it, reset or replace the coping, and rebuild gate piers so they are bonded into something instead of standing on their own. A stack here takes the weather from three sides, so repointing above roof level, cutting out perished brick, renewing the flaunching around the pots and rebuilding from the flashing up are all regular work, and that is where most of the cost of a small job actually sits. Where frost and salt have taken the face off a brick we cut the unit out and replace it, and the match is the awkward part: much of what was laid here in the 1960s and 1970s is long out of production, so it means reclaimed stock or a handmade equivalent and a trial panel left up for a fortnight. New brickwork means extension skins, porches, dwarf walls, low retaining walls between split level plots and new piers, built off a dug foundation with ties at proper centres.

Brickwork is not priced by area. You need to see the joints and the bricks before a figure means anything.

The building. A shared gable on a seafront block, a seventies detached house behind its front garden, and a flint and brick wall along the roadside are three different set ups. Under the work at height rules access is costed for how long the platform stands, not just its size.

Salt. Wind off the sea carries salt into soft brick and mortar, and as the wall dries the salt crystallises and flakes the faces off. The south west side suffers most. Cutting out spalled bricks and choosing a mortar that lets the wall breathe both add time.

Clay. Milford on Sea stands on clay that shrinks in a dry summer and swells in a wet winter. A crack at a corner or above a window may be old and settled or still moving. If a downpipe is dumping water by the footing, that is put right under Approved Document H before any crack is stitched.

Matching. An older brick can take time to match, and mortar trial panels come first.

Questions for any other bricklayer: how deep are the joints raked, and by hand or disc? What mix? How many bricks are being replaced?

Milford on Sea is 10.3 miles along the coast from our Boscombe base. Our brickwork covers SO41 from Everton and Keyhaven across to Hordle, Lymington and New Milton. Planning here is a New Forest District Council matter.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, belongs to Thomas Hannen, and he is the person who comes out to your wall and prices it. One verified Checkatrade customer scored us 10 out of 10. The visit and the written quote, broken into items, are both free. Before you book a visit in Milford on Sea, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Milford on Sea 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.