Bricklaying in Moordown

Front garden walls and piers. Moordown houses of the inter-war years were usually given a low brick front wall and a pair of gate piers. A century on, tree roots, a car catching the corner or frost in the coping has pushed plenty of them out of line.

A wall that has bowed or cracked right through usually has to come down to the footing and be rebuilt, re-using the sound bricks and making up the rest with reclaimed ones to match. A short run is two or three days.

Chimney stacks. The stacks on these houses are often shared with next door and stand on the party wall. Frost gets into the top courses, the flaunching round the pots cracks, and the brickwork starts to spall. We take the top down to sound brick, rebuild it on a new coping or flaunching, and rebed the pots. Because the stack straddles the boundary, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 can apply, and we will tell you when a notice is needed.

Cracks over bays and windows. A stepped crack above a bay or a window often means the lintel or the brick arch over it has failed. We cut out the cracked bricks, put in a new lintel where the old one has rusted or sagged, and rebuild the face in matching brick.

Cavity walls and wall ties. Some houses of this age were among the first built with a cavity, and the early steel wall ties can rust and swell, which shows as horizontal cracks every few courses. That is a specialist tie replacement, and we will tell you if that is what we think we are looking at rather than patch over it.

New work. Extensions, porches and new garden walls are built in blockwork and brick with a proper footing, damp proof course and stretcher bond to suit the house, and the new face coursed in with the old.

When we would talk you out of it. Fine hairline cracks in the mortar that are not growing are usually settlement from decades ago and do not need a builder. If the joints are just washed out, that is a pointing job, covered on our repointing in Moordown page.

No rate per square metre, because the metre of wall tells you almost nothing until you know what the joints are like.

Getting to it. A front garden wall you can reach from the pavement, a shared chimney stack on a two storey hipped roof, and the brickwork over a shopfront on Wimborne Road are three very different jobs to reach. A chimney or a gable wants a scaffold, a garden wall wants nothing. How long the platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line rather than an optional extra.

The joints, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow and is the only safe way on soft old brick. How deep the joints have to come out, and whether the brick faces have already spalled, decides the hours more than the area does.

The mix, and matching. Matching an existing mortar for colour, texture and strength takes trial panels. Matching a brick means sourcing it. Neither is a line most quotes make visible, and both are why two prices for the same wall can be so far apart.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are being raked and by hand or by disc, what the mortar mix is and whether it has been matched, how many bricks are being replaced, and whether the scaffold is included. Prices only compare once the answers line up.

We cover Moordown and the rest of BH9, from the shops on Wimborne Road down into Winton and west to Kinson, with BCP Council as the planning and building control authority. Our Boscombe base is just over two miles away.

You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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. Before you book a visit in Moordown, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Moordown 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.