Bricklaying and repointing in Ringwood

Lime repointing 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 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 are regular work here, and the platform is usually the biggest single item on a small stack job.

Getting on for a third of the 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 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.

No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you know what the joints are like. A High Street frontage straight onto the pavement, a terrace behind a small front garden and a detached house at Poulner with a gable you can reach off a tower are three different set ups. How long a platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line rather than an optional extra. Ask how deep the joints are being raked, by hand or by disc, and whether the scaffold is in.

We are about ten miles from Ringwood and through BH24 most weeks, covering the town and the villages around it including Ashley Heath, Poulner, Burley and Three Legged Cross. 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.