Bricklaying and repointing in Stone
Cracked brickwork, lime repointing, chimney stacks and boundary walls in Stone, Pamphill and around Wimborne.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Bricklaying and repointing
Cracking and repointing around Stone: what we do first
The ground along this stretch of the Blandford road shrinks in a dry summer and swells again over winter, and brickwork built on it moves with it. So on any cracked wall at Stone the first job is telling seasonal movement from something that is actually going somewhere. Point a moving crack and you will be pointing it again next autumn.
Three things bring people to the phone. A stepped crack through the brickwork by a corner or a window, usually noticed at the end of a long dry spell. Joints on an older elevation washed back until the brick edges stand proud. And a boundary wall that has bellied out, lost its coping, or been shoved by a root.
We come and look at the wall, get behind it and under it where we can, and tell you plainly whether you are looking at mortar, at water in the wrong place or at the ground. You get a survey in ordinary words, a note of what will keep for a couple of years, and an itemised written price for the part that will not. The site visit and the quote are both free, and we would rather tell you to watch a crack for a year than take money for the wrong repair.
The work
The brickwork jobs we do around Stone
Reading a crack before repairing it. Width, direction and where it stops tell you most of it. A stepped crack that follows the bed and perp joints, opens in late summer and closes again by February is seasonal ground movement, and the ground round here shrinks and swells. A crack that runs straight through the brick faces, keeps widening whatever the season, and throws a door or a window out of square is a different animal and wants a structural engineer before a bricklayer. We say which one you have, and we will not quote a cosmetic repair on the second sort.
Where the movement has settled down, the repair is to cut the damaged bricks out course by course, bed helical bars into the bed joints across the crack to tie the two sides together, replace the brick and repoint so the repair does not read as a patch. Done properly you should not be able to find it from the garden a year later. Done as a smear of mortar over the crack, it reappears by the next dry summer.
Lime on the period fabric. A fifth of the stock in the parish predates 1919, and there are ninety one listed entries around Pamphill and the Blandford road to show for it. Those walls are solid, soft brick laid in lime, and they have to stay breathable, so they get an NHL lime mix matched on sand for colour and grain, raked out by hand and finished in the profile the wall already has, flush or weather struck rather than a modern bucket handle.
The long walls along the lanes here fail from the top down. Once the coping is loose, water gets into the core, freezes and pushes the two faces apart, and the wall bows. We rebuild bowed lengths, reinstate brick on edge or tile creasing, rebuild gate piers pushed by a vehicle or by roots, and set a damp proof course in at the base where the wall will take one. Stacks bring cracked flaunching, soft top courses and a lean: we rebuild course for course and re-form the flaunching so it sheds water instead of holding it, working at height off a tower or a scaffold under work at height rules and priced as its own line. On new work, the part that matters here is under the ground. Foundation depth on shrinkable clay is a building control question, it is deeper than most people expect, and deeper again near a mature tree.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised by elevation: access, raking out, the mix, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines. This is Dorset Council, and no conservation area covers the settlement itself, so ordinary repointing and brick repair is maintenance and needs no planning permission. There are ninety one listed entries in the parish though, so check your address: on a listed building or its garden wall, repointing is alteration and needs listed building consent before a joint comes out. A new or raised boundary wall has height limits set out in Planning Portal guidance on garden walls, footings and structural work go through building control, and anything on a shared boundary brings in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you know what the joints are like. A cottage tight on the Blandford road, a house set back across a lawn we have to get a tower over, and a long boundary wall with a ditch behind it. 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. On anything structural here, foundation depth moves a price more than the brickwork above it. Ask the rake depth and what is being dug.
If something has moved
Loose brickwork, or a wall that has shifted
Ring rather than use the form. Anything overhead or leaning goes to the front of the queue: the first visit makes it safe, and we price the permanent repair once we can see how far the movement goes. Around here it is usually a boundary wall bellied out over a winter, or a crack that has opened in one season. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
The ground moves here, so where your rainwater goes is a structural question
The ground under this part of the parish is cohesive and carries a significant shrink and swell rating, which in plain terms means it takes up water and expands, then gives it up in a dry summer and shrinks.
Brickwork sitting on it rides up and down slightly with the seasons, and where one part of a building is on a shallower footing than another, or a thirsty tree is drinking from one corner, the two parts move by different amounts and the wall cracks at the weakest line. That is why so many cracks around here appear in September and look better by spring.
What follows from it is unglamorous and genuinely useful. Keep water away from the footings: a downpipe discharging onto the ground beside a wall, a gully that has stopped taking water, or a soakaway sited close to the house all put a wet spot right where the ground is most sensitive, and Approved Document H covers where surface water is supposed to go.
Check the trees, because a large one within its own height of the building is a common cause and felling it suddenly can be worse than leaving it. And if a crack has just appeared, mark the ends with a pencil and a date, or fit a simple tell-tale, and watch it across a full year before anyone repairs it. A crack that closes in winter needs a bricklayer. One that does not needs an engineer first, and we will say so.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Stone, Pamphill, Wimborne Minster, Corfe Mullen and the BH21 villages, and we are about eight miles out, so coming to look at a crack is a morning rather than a job in itself. 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.
Questions
Stone questions we get asked
The crack over our door steps through the joints. Why?
Because mortar is weaker than brick and gives way first, which is how it is meant to behave. What causes the movement is the ground: Stone sits on cohesive soil with a significant shrink swell rating, so it takes up water through winter and gives it back in a dry summer, and anything near a large tree or a leaking drain moves with it. Mark the crack with a pencil line and watch the width for a season.
Pamphill has a lot of listed buildings. Are we likely one?
It is worth checking rather than assuming. The parish carries 91 listed entries, Pamphill Manor House and the Chapel of St Margaret and St Anthony among them, and a fair number of older cottages and their boundary walls are covered too. Stone has no conservation area, so on an unlisted house nobody is looking at your mortar at all. On a listed one, consent covers the mortar and the joint as much as the brick.
Our house dates from the eighties. Is it too new to point?
Not at all. The 1980s were the busiest building period in Stone at 19.5% of the stock, and a bucket handle joint in cement mortar from then has had forty winters at it. The outer few millimetres weathers back, the joint stops shedding water and the wall starts holding it instead. What that needs is a shallow repoint on the weather elevation, not the full depth work an older solid wall would want.
Should the guttering be sorted before the pointing?
Always, or you are paying to point a wall that is about to get soaked again. A leaking gutter joint puts a constant stripe of water down one line of brickwork, and that stripe is where the mortar goes first, where the moss grows and where frost damage shows up. Repairing the joints under it without fixing the leak buys a couple of seasons at most. Thomas checks the gutters and downpipes on a Stone job before pricing a single length of joint.
Can a bulged section of wall be rebuilt rather than replaced?
A bulge means the outer skin has lost its connection to what is behind it, so pointing over the face achieves nothing. We prop where needed, take the loose area down course by course, keep the sound bricks back for reuse, and rebuild to the original bond with proper ties into the inner skin. On a boundary wall it is often a failed coping that let the water in and started the whole thing.
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Bricklaying and repointing near Stone
Bricklaying and repointing nearby
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Get a written price for your brickwork in Stone
Send a photograph of the crack or the wall and we will come and look properly. Free visit, itemised written quote, honest answer about whether it needs doing yet.