Bricklayer in Poole

What goes wrong with Poole brickwork is fairly consistent. A front elevation on the street where the joints have gone back far enough to see. Brick faces flaking off below a window. A parapet or a chimney shedding mortar into the gutter. A front boundary wall leaning out over the pavement with a gate pier that has parted company from it. Or something new: a garden wall in place of a tired fence, a front wall rebuilt round a wider gate, brick steps, or the skin of a porch.

New brickwork in Poole starts in the ground. A garden or front wall is only as straight as its footing, so every new wall we build goes on a dug concrete foundation sized for the wall, with a damp proof course above ground level and a coping that throws water clear of both faces.

Thickness and bond. A half-brick wall is a single skin of bricks laid lengthways, fine for a planter or a low edging wall beside a patio or drive. Anything taller or longer wants a one-brick wall, the length of a brick thick and bonded so both faces are tied together, or piers built in at intervals to stiffen it. Long runs need a movement joint so the wall can move without cracking.

The right brick for an exposed wall. A garden wall is wet on both faces and has no roof over it. We specify frost-resistant brick, rated F2, for walls, piers, copings and steps, and a coping or brick-on-edge cap with an overhang and a drip. On an open plot facing the harbour, that matters more than the colour.

Gate piers and steps. A gate pier carries a hanging gate, so it is built a full brick or wider, bonded into the wall, and on a wide opening we build a steel or concrete core into it so the hinges have something to hold. Brick steps get frost-resistant or engineering brick on the treads, laid to a slight fall so rain runs off.

Retaining walls, openings and extensions. A retaining wall between split-level gardens holds back soil and water, so it needs drainage behind, weep holes through it, and often a reinforced block core faced in brick; anything retaining real height is a design job and we will tell you so. Blocking up a doorway or window means toothing new brick into the old courses so there is no straight joint. A porch or extension goes up as a cavity wall: blockwork inner leaf, brick outer leaf, stainless wall ties, a cavity tray and weep vents over openings, with building control inspecting it.

A new wall beside a road can go up to one metre without planning permission, and two metres elsewhere, under the permitted development rules for walls. Edge walls for a drive or patio follow the same rules.

Brickwork in Poole is priced per job, not per brick or per hour. The same length of wall can be a morning or a week, depending on what is being built or what is wrong with it, and the written quote itemises what makes up the total.

New walls. Length, height and thickness, half-brick or one-brick, set how much brick goes in. Then the dig: how deep the foundation has to go, whether an old wall, roots or a service pipe are in the way, and where the spoil goes. Brick choice and bond come next, then piers, coping and any gate.

The age of the wall. A Georgian or Victorian frontage near the Old Town has soft brick laid in lime mortar, and it needs a matching brick and a lime mix. An inter-war semi in Parkstone or Oakdale usually has harder brick and cement mortar.

How far the damage goes. A few spalled faces can be cut out and replaced. A cracked wall needs the cause found first: a rusting lintel, corroded ties, a tree, or water from a leaking drain beside a foundation.

Getting to it. A chimney stack or a gable needs a platform, a tower for a low gable and scaffold for the rest, and a parapet on a terrace needs scaffold over the street. Work at height rules govern how long it stands, so it is a line on the quote.

The joints and the waste. How deep the joints have to come out, and whether the faces have already spalled, sets the hours more than the area does. Old brick, spoil and raked-out mortar all leave with us, and that is priced too.

Poole's Old Town sits in the Town Centre Heritage conservation area, and its brick is the reason. BCP Council's appraisal of the area, published from its conservation areas page, calls Church Street and Market Street "the most complete, predominantly Georgian streets in the Borough", with "narrow-jointed, lime pointed red brickwork". On a wall like that, repointing means lime, raked by hand back to the original narrow joint, never widened with a disc and never filled in cement.

The council is blunt about the alternative. The same appraisal says re-pointing or rendering historic masonry with cementitious materials has been done without consent and has "caused irreversible damage" to stone and brickwork, and it asks owners to take advice from the council first. Like for like repair needs nothing; a new mortar colour, a different joint or paint on bare brick changes the look of the street.

Front walls are the other catch. In the Victorian and Edwardian streets around Green Road, the appraisal notes low boundary walls and gate piers in front of most houses. Pulling one down to widen a drive can be relevant demolition in a conservation area, an offence without consent, so check before you book a skip. On a listed building, such as Balston Terrace on West Street, works that affect its character need listed building consent. We write the brick, mortar mix and joint profile into the quote, and we will make the enquiry with the council for you.

Nearby places we also cover for bricklaying, with straight-line distances from Poole, and the other trades we offer in Poole itself.

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