Bricklaying in Southbourne

Garden and boundary walls. Many of the older houses in Southbourne stand behind low front walls in red or yellow brick, often with a brick or stone coping and piers either side of the gate.

They fail in predictable ways: a coping works loose and lets water into the core, a tree root pushes a section out, or the wall was built without a proper footing and has sunk at one end. A cracked or bowed length is usually taken down to sound brick and rebuilt on the existing base, reusing the old bricks where they clean up and matching reclaimed ones where they do not. A short length of front wall is often two or three days.

Chimney stacks. The detached Edwardian houses in Southbourne carry tall stacks, and once the pots, flaunching and top courses have been through enough winters, they start to shed. We rebuild the top of a stack from the last sound course, reset the pots on new flaunching, and renew the lead with a roofer's eye for where the water gets in. A stack that is no longer used can be capped and vented, or taken down below the roofline if the planning position allows.

New brickwork. Extensions, garden walls, piers, steps and small structures. Footings and foundations dug to suit the load, a damp proof course at the right level, blockwork inner leaves with stainless wall ties across the cavity, and facing brick laid to the bond of the house, usually stretcher bond on the later houses and something older on the period ones. Lintels over every opening, sized for the load, with a cavity tray above.

Cracks and movement. A stepped crack through the mortar of a Southbourne wall is not always structural, and a straight crack through the bricks usually is something. We look at where it runs and whether it is still moving before recommending anything. Cutting out and replacing cracked or spalled bricks, and stitching across a settled crack with helical bars, are both routine; a wall that needs underpinning is a job for an engineer first, and we tell you.

Mortar and matching. The older houses in Southbourne were built in lime mortar, and a rebuild in hard cement mortar sets up the soft brick around it to fail. We use a lime mix where the wall calls for it, matched for colour and sand, and on anything visible we put up a small sample panel first.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, any brick replacement and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing on a Southbourne job is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

BCP Council is the planning authority. A front wall up to a metre high beside a road needs no permission, and the Planning Portal guidance on walls sets out the rest. On the stretch of Southbourne Grove that is a conservation area, taking down a wall or a chimney can need consent, and the council keeps the list. Work on a shared wall or a stack on the line of a party wall may need notice under the Party Wall Act.

Ring rather than use the form. Anything overhead or leaning goes to the front of the queue: a chimney with movement in it, a parapet, a garden wall pushed out by roots or a vehicle.

The first visit is about making it safe and stable, and we quote the permanent repair once we can see how far the movement goes. On the roads closest to the cliff, a loose chimney pot or coping stone in a winter gale is the one to ring about before it comes down. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

A good part of Southbourne was built in the years either side of the First World War, and a lot of those houses have tall brick stacks standing well clear of the roof.

On the side facing the sea, a stack takes wind driven rain and salt year after year, and it dries more slowly than a wall at ground level. That is why the top few courses, the flaunching and the pots on these Southbourne houses go before the rest, and why a stack can be sound at the base and loose at the top.

What that means for you: look at the stack from the road with binoculars before the winter. Open joints, cracked flaunching, a pot that leans, or brick faces that have flaked off are all signs it wants attention. The repair is usually a rebuild of the top few courses and new flaunching, done from a scaffold in a few days. Where a stack is no longer used, taking it down to below the roofline removes the problem for good, but on the houses near the Grove conservation area check first, because a row of chimneys is part of how a street looks.

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

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