Bricklaying and repointing in Norton

Repointing bungalow elevations. A third of the housing around here is single storey, which changes the job in two useful ways. Most of it can be reached off a tower rather than a full scaffold, so the access line on the quote is small. And a bungalow has a deep eaves overhang shading the top of the wall, so the damage is nearly always concentrated in the bottom three or four courses, where rain splashes back off a path, and on the gable ends where the overhang runs out. We rake out and point back the courses that need it and leave the ones that do not, which is far smaller than repointing an elevation for the sake of it.

Soft brick and stone in lime. A quarter of the housing here predates 1919. Those walls are solid, one unit thick, with no cavity behind them, and a good number are stone or a mix of stone and brick around the openings. On that fabric the mortar is meant to be the sacrificial part. We rake out by hand, never with a disc cutter, and point back in a breathable lime mix, an NHL gauged to the wall or a putty mix on the softest of it, finished flush so the joint sits back from the arris rather than smeared over it. Where a face has spalled off or a stone has shattered along a bed, the failed units come out and go back in a match. On old work that means sourcing a handmade or reclaimed brick, which takes ordering: everything we bring over comes on the ferry, so a matched brick is settled before the scaffold goes up.

Two kilometres from the coast the wind has a long run at anything exposed, and it works on edges. A coping is what keeps the wall below it dry, so a coping that has lifted or lost its bedding is the first thing we look at on a boundary wall, ahead of the joints. Gate piers and the returns at the end of a run take the most weathering and are usually where a rebuild starts and stops. Stacks on the bungalows here are short and squat and get overlooked because you cannot see them from the ground, and they still take the weather on four sides. We repoint them, renew cracked flaunching, reset copings and rebuild the top courses where the mortar has gone to sand, and cap a redundant stack with ventilation rather than sealing damp inside the flue.

A lot of walls at this end of the Island were rendered or painted at some point, and when the render lets go the brickwork behind it has often been sitting wet for years. We take off what is loose, put the brickwork right, replace what cannot be saved and tell you honestly whether the wall wants rendering again or would be better left as a repointed face. New work is extensions, garden rooms and porches in blockwork with a facing skin, laid in stretcher bond with the cavity, the ties, the damp proof course and a lintel sized for the opening, and taking a garden wall down and rebuilding it on a proper footing where its own weight has begun to push it over.

No rate per square metre: the joints decide the job, not the area. A bungalow elevation you can reach off a tower, a cottage gable where the scaffold has to stand on a lane, and a boundary wall taking the weather straight off the water are three different jobs. A stack or a gable wants a scaffold and a garden wall wants nothing, and work at height rules make the platform a priced line. Matching a brick means sourcing it, which out here means ordering ahead. Ask what the mix is and whether it was matched.

Around a quarter of the housing in and around Norton predates 1919, and that quarter behaves in a way the rest of the street does not. Those are solid walls with no cavity, built in soft brick or stone bedded in lime, and they were designed to take water in on the face and let it back out again through the joint.

The mortar is meant to be weaker than the units, so that when something has to give it is the joint and not the brick. That is why the damage we see most often on period walls here is not age at all. It is a cement repoint done thirty years ago: the joints now stand proud like ribs, the brick faces have gone hollow between them, and the wall holds damp because the water has no easy way out.

If your property is one of the old ones, the questions to ask are short. What mortar are you proposing, and is it lime. A strong ordinary cement mix is the wrong answer whatever else is on the quote. How are the joints coming out, because a disc cutter on soft brick widens the joint and chips the edges permanently, and hand tools are the only safe way.

Will you mix a sample panel and leave it to weather before doing the whole elevation. And expect the wall to take a season or two to dry out properly once it can breathe again, which is normal rather than a sign something has gone wrong.

We cover Norton, Yarmouth and Freshwater and the PO41 addresses around them, and we come over for the job rather than squeezing it in around something else. 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.