Bricklaying and repointing in New Milton

Repointing postwar and eighties brickwork. A great deal of New Milton went up between the sixties and the late eighties, and that brickwork was pointed in a strong sand and cement, struck flush or bucket handle, in joints thinner than a Victorian wall would have. It does not fail evenly. What goes first is the exposed edge: the top course under a coping, the corner returns, the reveals round the openings and the whole of the south west face. We rake out to sound mortar, twice the joint width where the brick will take it, and point back in a mix matched for strength and colour rather than whatever is in the mixer that week.

A cavity wall of that age was built with galvanised ties, and under three kilometres from the water they corrode from the outer leaf inwards. As a tie rusts it swells, and it lifts the course it is bedded in. The sign is horizontal cracking at regular heights up the wall, roughly every fifth or sixth course, on the exposed elevation only. The repair is remedial ties fixed through into the inner leaf on a set pattern, then cutting out and replacing the courses that have been jacked apart. It is not a job to point over, because the crack simply comes back through the new mortar. Mild steel lintels over garage doors, patio doors and wide window openings rust the same way, with a cracked joint following the line of the lintel and sometimes a dropped soldier course above it.

Terraces and shared stacks. A quarter of the homes here are terraced, and on a terrace the chimney stack often straddles the line between two houses. That matters practically: scaffold usually has to go up over both properties, and the sensible thing is a single quote for the whole stack, the pointing, the flaunching and the copings together, rather than each owner pointing their half of it a year apart. We are happy to price it that way and to talk to the neighbour. The low dwarf wall under a fence, the garden wall along the boundary, the gate pier at each side of a drive and the single skin garage return weather from both faces at once and are the first brickwork on a property to go, most of them on a shallow foundation with no damp proof course in them at all. Where a face has blown we cut out the failed bricks and replace them with a match, reclaimed where the original run has gone, and where a whole panel has gone we will say so rather than dot new bricks through it.

A rate per square metre would tell you nothing here. A terraced front elevation you can only reach across a pavement, a stack shared between two houses and a bungalow gable behind a side gate three feet wide are three different jobs. A gable or a stack needs a scaffold and a boundary wall needs none, and work at height rules are why that platform is priced by time as well as size. Matching mortar for colour and strength takes trial panels, and sourcing a brick takes longer still. Ask how deep the raking goes, hand or disc.

New Milton is a couple of miles back from the water, which is close enough that salt reaches the brickwork and far enough that people do not expect it to. Salt does three things to a wall. It holds moisture in the face between showers, so a brick that would have gone through ten freeze and thaw cycles in a winter goes through three times as many.

It crystallises inside the face and pushes the surface off from behind. And it eats galvanised metal, which is why ties, lintels and coping fixings on the seaward side of a house here fail a decade or two before the same components on the sheltered side. That is the practical point. Your house does not need one specification, it needs two.

So when you are comparing quotes, ask what is going on the exposed elevation as opposed to the rest. On the weather side we want a joint that sheds water rather than one that holds it, which usually means weather struck rather than deeply recessed, and a mortar mix strong enough to stand the exposure but still softer than the brick beside it.

Any replacement ties, straps or fixings within reach of the salt should be stainless rather than galvanised, and it is worth asking, because it is not a line most quotes make visible. One thing to say no to: a clear water repellent sealer over the face. On a wall that is carrying salt it traps what is already in there and pushes the spalling deeper in, and it makes the repointing underneath it harder to do later.

We cover New Milton and BH25, and the villages either side of it: Barton on Sea, Bashley, Ashley, Everton and Milford on Sea. It is a short run for us and we are over this way most weeks. 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.