Bricklaying in Ringwood

Soft brick in the old centre. The Market Place, the High Street and the lanes off them are solid wall in soft handmade brick, some of it with flint or rubble at the plinth and a gauged arch over the older openings.

Nearly a fifth of the town's stock predates 1919 and the biggest single slice is pre-1900. We rake those joints out by hand, never with a disc, because a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off a soft brick in one pass, then point back in an NHL lime matched for sand, colour and texture. The joint is struck to suit the wall, usually flush or slightly recessed on a very worn frontage rather than weather struck, so it does not stand proud of a face that has already weathered back.

A great many of those walls were repointed in sand and cement in the last fifty years. It looks tidy and it does real damage: a solid wall has to stay breathable, and a hard joint pushes the moisture out through the brick face instead, taking the face with it. Cutting hard cement out of a soft wall without damaging what is left is slow, careful work and the only repair that solves it.

Frontages, parapets and stacks over a public pavement. Flats are 28.7% of the Ringwood stock and a lot of them are conversions over commercial ground floors, which brings parapets above a shop front, the brick panel between a fascia and the first floor windows, and tall multi flue stacks. Those frontages sit straight on the pavement, so the footway has to be managed and a scaffold over a public path licensed, and that appears on the quote as its own line. Repointing above roof level, cutting out perished brick, renewing the flaunching round the pots and rebuilding from the flashing up make up a typical stack job, and the platform is usually the biggest single item on a small stack job.

Getting on for a third of Ringwood's housing has gone up since the early 1980s, mostly out towards Poulner: brick outer skin in stretcher bond, blockwork behind, cavity between. Where the ties have corroded you get fine horizontal cracking at regular course intervals, worst on the gable, and remedial ties go in from outside without taking the wall down. Newer builds bring cracked sills, movement joints never properly formed, and lintel bearings.

The walls along the older Ringwood lanes and round the Bickerley are brick, and brick with flint, most with no damp proof course, so they draw water up and the bottom courses turn soft. We rebuild bowed lengths on a proper footing, reset or replace the coping so water is thrown clear of the top, put a DPC in where a rebuilt wall allows it, and rebuild gate piers so they are bonded into the wall rather than standing beside it. Where frost has taken a face off we cut out and replace, matching with reclaimed or handmade stock rather than anything off a modern pallet, off a sample taken from the wall with a trial panel left up so you can judge the weathering. New brickwork means extension skins, porches, retaining walls and piers, off a dug foundation with wall ties at proper centres.

A square metre of wall tells us nothing until we have looked at the bricks and the joints, so there is no rate.

The bricks you have. Soft handmade bricks on the older houses in the centre need a match in size, colour and hardness, and that can mean hunting down reclaimed stock. The post-war and newer estates have machine-made bricks that are easier to match.

The mortar. Old walls laid in lime need lime back. Hard cement mortar on a soft brick traps water and the brick faces start to go. Newer walls take a cement mix.

Movement. The ground around Ringwood shrinks and swells with the weather. A crack that opens in summer and closes in winter is a ground question, and it gets diagnosed before any brick is rebuilt, or it simply cracks again.

Access. A frontage straight onto the pavement, a gable reached down a narrow passage, and a garden wall you can walk up to are three set ups. The work at height rules make the platform a priced line.

Ask other quotes whether the joints are raked out by hand or with a grinder, which mortar is going in, and how any replacement bricks will be matched.

We are 8 miles away in Boscombe and cover Ringwood town centre, Poulner, Hightown, Ashley Heath, Burley and Three Legged Cross. New Forest District Council handles planning and building control for the town.

Registered in England and Wales, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd has the company number 15471719, open to anyone to check. You deal with Thomas Hannen, whose business it is, and he prices the wall himself after looking at it. A verified Checkatrade review gives the firm 10 out of 10. The site visit and the written breakdown of the quote are free. Before you book a visit in Ringwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Ringwood 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.