Bricklaying and repointing in Poole

Old Town solid walls, in lime. The streets behind the Quay are handmade brick laid in Flemish bond, often with a gauged arch over the sash windows and a parapet at the top. There is no cavity in any of it. We rake the joints by hand, never with a disc, because a disc widens the joint and takes the edge off a soft brick, and point back in NHL lime matched for sand, colour and texture. On a frontage the joint profile is part of the look of the street, so we agree it with you before we start rather than default to whatever is quickest. The terraces around the town centre are the same solid wall construction and most have been repointed at least once in sand and cement. A hard joint on a soft wall stops the wall breathing and pushes the damp out through the brick face instead, which is why the faces are spalling while the joints look sound. Taking that out and putting lime back is slow work and it is the repair that actually fixes it. Terraces also bring shared parapets and shared stacks, so we sort the party wall position before anything is touched.

Roughly a fifth of Poole's homes date from between the wars, built as a brick outer skin in stretcher bond with a cavity behind. The galvanised ties in those walls corrode and swell, which lifts the outer skin a fraction at every tie and shows up as fine horizontal cracking at regular course intervals, usually worst on the gable. Remedial ties go in from outside without taking the wall down, and the holes are made good in matched mortar. The bay windows on those houses are carried on their own brickwork and are often the first thing to move, as is the steel over a garage opening or a wide patio door, which rusts, expands and cracks the courses sitting on it.

Flats and communal brickwork. A third of the homes in Poole are flats, and we price communal work for management companies and residents' associations as readily as for a single owner: parapets, balcony fronts, the brick panels between windows, and the corners that take the weather off the harbour. 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 has got to before anyone books a scaffold.

Almost every terrace and semi here has a low front boundary wall, most built with no damp proof course, so they wick water up and the bottom courses go soft. We rebuild bowed lengths on a proper footing, put a DPC in where the wall allows, reset or replace the coping, and rebuild gate piers so they are bonded in rather than freestanding. Be aware that taking one down inside the Town Centre Heritage conservation area is not automatically permitted. Where frost has taken the face off, we cut out and replace, matching with reclaimed or handmade stock, a sample off the wall and a trial panel you can look at before we commit. New brickwork means extension skins, porches, retaining walls between split level plots and new piers, built off a dug foundation with ties at proper centres.

We do not price by the square metre. A Georgian frontage straight onto the pavement in the Old Town, a Victorian terrace with a shared parapet and a 1930s semi with a gable you can reach off a tower are three different set ups. Getting a platform to a stack or a gable is its own line on the quote, because work at height rules govern how long it stands. What sets the hours is how deep the joints have to come out and whether the faces have already spalled. Ask whether the mortar has been matched.

We are about six miles from Poole Quay and in the town most weeks, covering BH15 and the surrounding postcodes from Hamworthy and Upton through Longfleet, Parkstone and Broadstone. 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.