Bricklaying and repointing at Thorney Hill
Repointing, cracked and spalled brickwork, chimney stacks and garden walls, priced off a free visit and written down line by line.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Bricklaying and repointing
Repointing in Thorney Hill: the weather side is where the work is
On most houses at Thorney Hill only one or two elevations actually need repointing, and it is nearly always the ones facing the open forest and the weather. We rake out the joints that have gone, match the mortar to what is already on the wall, and leave the sheltered elevations alone rather than sell you the whole house.
People here usually ring about one of three things. Joints on a gable that have eroded back behind the face of the brick, so the wall looks pitted and dark after rain. A damp patch inside an outside wall that decorating will not fix. Or a garden wall, a pier or a stack that has started to move and is now obviously out of line.
We come and look at the wall, in daylight, and tell you which of those you have. A good deal of what gets called damp out here is rain getting through an eroded joint or a cracked lintel bearing, and the fix is a day of brickwork rather than anything dramatic. You get a straight account of what needs doing now, what will keep, and an itemised written price for the work. The site visit and the quote cost nothing.
The work
The brickwork jobs we do at Thorney Hill
Repointing the weather elevations on the newer houses. A lot of the housing around the green and the lanes off it went up between the sixties and the early eighties, in cavity brickwork with a sand and cement joint. That mortar has a working life, and on the exposed side, which here faces south west, it is usually spent first: the joint goes back a few millimetres, the face of the brick starts to fret, and rain sits in the wall instead of running off it. We cut and rake the failed joints out, repoint to match the profile already there, and finish the elevation as a whole so it does not read as a patch.
Cracks that are wall ties rather than mortar. On cavity walls of that generation, a crack that runs horizontally and repeats every few courses is not a pointing problem. It is the ties in the cavity rusting and jacking the outer leaf apart, and repointing over it hides it for a year. We look for the pattern, cut out and replace the damaged bricks, and set out plainly what the wall needs so you can decide with the facts in front of you.
More than a fifth of the stock here predates 1919, and those brick cottages and the outbuildings behind them are a different animal: soft handmade brick in a solid wall, no cavity, built to dry out through a breathable lime joint. Those get raked by hand and repointed in an NHL lime mix with the sand matched for colour, and you see a sample panel before we go further. Cement on a period wall like that pushes the water into the brick face and takes it off after the first hard frost.
Stacks here take the full run of the wind off the heath. Flaunching cracks, the top courses go soft, and eventually the stack leans. We rebuild from a sound course up, reuse the brick where it is worth reusing, and re-flaunch properly. It is work at height under work at height rules, and the platform is a line in the quote. Boundaries that face onto the lanes and the forest take knocks, and their coping and gate piers are usually the first to go, so we rebuild bowed lengths, put back brick on edge coping, rebuild a gate pier on a proper footing and get a damp proof course in at the base. New work runs the same way: an extension or garage skin in stretcher bond with blockwork behind, a lintel over each opening and a foundation sized for ground that shrinks and swells, all through building control.
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. Thorney Hill sits inside the New Forest National Park, so the planning authority is the National Park rather than the district, and its interactive property map is the quickest way to see what applies to your address. There is no conservation area over the hamlet itself and only three listed entries in it, so straightforward repointing and brick replacement is maintenance and needs nothing. A new or raised garden wall has height limits set out in Planning Portal guidance on garden walls, structural work goes through building control, and a wall on a shared boundary brings in 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. Detached houses are four in ten of the stock here, so a full height gable, an old cottage tight to the lane, and a garden wall you can work off the ground 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.
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 stack after a gale, or a boundary wall a vehicle has caught on a narrow lane. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
The wind comes off the forest from the south west, and it sets the job
The exposed side of almost every building here faces south west, into the open ground, and driven rain does its damage at the edges rather than in the middle of a wall.
That is why the pointing fails first around window and door reveals, under sills, at the corners of a gable and on the top few courses of a stack or a parapet, while the sheltered elevations of the same house can still be sound after fifty years. It is also why patch pointing on that side rarely holds: water finds the next weak joint along and you are back where you started next winter.
Two practical things follow from it. Repoint the weather elevation as a whole and in one go, and be more careful about the mix and the weathering of the joint there than anywhere else, because a joint left proud or slack on that face will hold water instead of shedding it.
And if a room on that side of the house is damp, get the brickwork looked at before you start on the inside, because a wall that is taking rain through an open joint will make the same wet patch come back through whatever you put over it. We would rather tell you that on a free visit than take money for pointing a wall that is not the problem.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Thorney Hill, Bransgore, Burley and the BH23 villages either side of the forest, and we are under ten miles away, so coming out to look at a wall is easy to arrange. 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
Thorney Hill questions we get asked
We are in the National Park. Who decides on brickwork?
The New Forest National Park Authority, not the district council, because Thorney Hill sits inside the Park boundary and the Authority is the planning authority for it. On a like for like repoint to an unlisted house that makes no practical difference, since repair is not development. Where it matters is anything changing what the building looks like from outside, and there the Park applies tighter design expectations than you would meet just beyond the boundary.
Most houses here are detached. Does that make access easier?
Access is rarely the problem here. Detached houses are 39.7% of the stock in Thorney Hill, the largest single type, so we can normally get a tower or a scaffold right round a building without asking a neighbour for permission or standing on someone else's path. It also means all four elevations weather differently, so they can be priced and done one at a time rather than committed to as a single job.
The garden slopes towards the house. Is that a wall problem?
It becomes one. Thorney Hill is on cohesive ground with a significant shrink swell rating, so water ponding against a foundation instead of running away changes how the ground beneath it behaves through the year. That shows as cracking which opens in a dry summer and closes again over winter, usually at a corner. Getting the levels and the surface water away from the wall does more good than any amount of fresh mortar.
Why is the south west side always the worst?
That is the exposed face here, and driven rain works at the edges rather than the middle of a wall. Water arrives almost horizontally, so it gets under the cills, into the reveals around the windows and behind the verge and top course, which is where the joints go first. The middle of the same elevation can still be perfectly sound. We price the weathered parts of a wall rather than defaulting to all of it.
How many days would a stack rebuild run to?
Two or three on site for a single stack once the access is up, and the access is what sets the date rather than the brickwork. We drop it to sound work below the flaunching, keep the pot where it is sound, rebuild in the same bond with a mortar matched to what is there, and re-flaunch. Nothing is left open overnight. In Thorney Hill the roofing and the brickwork are the same firm, so one scaffold covers both.
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Get a written price for your brickwork at Thorney Hill
Tell us what the wall is doing and we will come and look at it. Free visit, free itemised quote, and no chasing afterwards.