Bricklaying and repointing in Verwood
Brick matching and repairs, rebuilt garden and screen walls, wall ties and repointing, across Verwood, Three Legged Cross and BH31.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most Verwood brickwork is modern cavity work and it very rarely needs repointing from top to bottom. The jobs here are matching: cutting out what has failed and putting back brick and mortar that nobody can pick out afterwards. That is a harder skill on an eighties house than on a Georgian one.
People here ring us for three reasons. Something has been damaged, so a pier has been clipped, a wall has been driven into, or a section has come down in the wind. An extension or a garden room is being planned and the brick has to match a house that was built in a hurry thirty or forty years ago. Or the bottom of a wall has gone green and soft and the skirting inside the same room feels damp.
We come out and look at the wall properly. That means finding out what brick you actually have rather than what it looks like, checking where the damp proof course sits against the outside ground, tapping for anything loose, and photographing it all so you see what we see. Then you get a straight answer on what needs doing and what is fine left alone.
The work
What we do most on Verwood brickwork
Matching brick on a modern house. Most of Verwood went up from the eighties onward, 55.6 per cent of it between 1983 and 2008, and its facing brick came from a range, often a blend of two or three shades laid to a pattern. Plenty of those ranges are long discontinued, and you cannot reclaim them because nobody has knocked the houses down yet. So matching is real work. We take a brick out, match it on size, texture and colour against what is available, then lay a sample panel and let it dry before you commit, because a brick that looks right wet is usually wrong. On a repair facing the road that is the difference between something you never notice and a patch you see from the pavement for twenty years.
Movement joints. Modern brickwork expands, which is why a long elevation has vertical movement joints in it filled with a flexible sealant. On houses of this age that sealant has perished, gone hard and pulled away from one side, and the joint has quietly become a way in for water. Raking those out and refilling them properly is a small job that prevents a much larger one. Where a wall has cracked because it never had a movement joint, we cut one in as part of the repair rather than pointing the crack up and waiting.
Verwood is bungalow country, 44.4 per cent of the housing, and every close has dwarf walls to the front, screen walls between two plots, planters and gate piers. They lean, they crack at the pier and the coping lifts. We rebuild off a footing deep enough for ground that shrinks and swells, tie piers in, and re-bed or replace coping, because the coping is what keeps the top of the wall from drinking. On the older post-war houses the faults are the usual ones: a rusting lintel lifting the course above a window, ties corroding and cracking the outer leaf on a line, a bowed panel cut out and rebuilt in stretcher bond. There are still a handful of period buildings along the older roads, nine listed entries in the parish, and those are solid walls, soft brick bedded in lime, wanting the opposite treatment: raked by hand, pointed in a natural hydraulic lime softer than the brick and finished flush so the wall stays breathable.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Repointing like for like is maintenance, so there is nothing to apply for. Verwood has no conservation area of its own and only nine listed entries, so for the great majority of addresses the brick and the mortar are your choice. If you are in one of the older properties, listed building consent comes into it and we check the address before we quote. A new wall needs planning permission above a metre where it fronts a road and above two metres elsewhere, and the Planning Portal sets out where that line falls. An extension brings building control in, and where the work meets the boundary the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 gives your neighbour a formal notice period.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
No rate per square metre. Access decides more than area here: a bungalow you can walk right round, a detached house with a narrow side path and a screen wall between two drives are three different jobs, and most bungalow work comes off a tower rather than a full scaffold. How long that platform stands matters as much as its size, and work at height rules are why it is a priced line. Then the joints, and whether a discontinued brick has to be sourced. Ask what the mortar mix is and whether the scaffold is in the figure.
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, and the first visit is about making it safe. A screen wall or a pier that has been hit and is now leaning towards a drive or a path is the one we come out for straight away. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Bungalow brickwork nearly all happens at ground level
Verwood is bungalow country, and for a bricklayer that changes the shape of the work. A bungalow has more external wall for the floor area inside it than a house does, so there is more brickwork per household to look after. The useful half of that is that almost all of it is within reach: a tower or a low scaffold covers most of a bungalow elevation, where the same repair on a two storey house needs a proper platform standing for days.
Access is often the biggest single line on a brickwork quote, so on a bungalow more of your money goes into the actual repair. It also means it is worth doing the whole elevation while somebody is there, rather than the one patch you noticed.
The other half is less comfortable. Because the whole wall is low, nearly every brick on a bungalow sits in the splash zone, and the thing that decides its life is not the pointing but the ground beside it. Look at where your damp proof course is: you should be able to see it as a line in the joint, roughly two courses of brick clear of the finished ground.
If a patio has been laid over the old one, a border has been topped up year after year, or gravel has been raked up against the wall, that line gets bridged and the bottom of the wall stays wet. That is what is usually behind damp skirting boards and green, crumbling brickwork in a bungalow of this age, and it is worth ruling out before anybody sells you an injected damp course. Dropping the ground back, cutting in a gravel margin and getting rainwater away from the wall fixes more bungalows in this town than any chemical does.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Verwood, Three Legged Cross, West Moors, Ashley Heath and Alderholt, across BH31 and BH21. The free site visit is where the survey happens, at the wall, rather than a price guessed from a photograph. 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
Verwood questions we get asked
Is an eighties house too new to need repointing?
Not necessarily. Verwood is unusual for this area in that 55.6% of its houses went up between 1983 and 2008, and those walls were pointed in a hard cement mix that does not weather evenly. What fails on them is the exposed gable and the parapet or garden return, where the joint face crazes and starts holding water. The main elevations are often still sound and do not want touching at all.
Does a bungalow give you more wall to point?
More perimeter for the same floor space, certainly. With 44.4% of Verwood being bungalows, the typical job here is a long low run of brickwork rather than a tall narrow one, so more of the wall sits within splashback range of the ground and near the damp proof course. The upside is that most of it is reachable from a tower, and the chimney is the only part needing anything taller.
Why did my garden wall lean after a dry summer?
Because a free standing wall has a shallow foundation and the ground across Verwood shrinks back hard when it dries out. Cohesive soil loses volume in a long dry spell, the footing settles on the side that dries first, and the wall goes out of plumb at the top where you finally notice it. Rebuilding the top courses without dealing with the footing simply buys you until the next dry summer.
What does your written quote actually itemise?
Every part of the work on its own line, so you can leave some of it out. On a Verwood job that usually means the gable separately from the rear elevation, the garden wall separately from the house, access equipment as its own item, and the mortar specification written down rather than left vague. The site visit and the written quote are both free, and VAT is added because this is a limited company.
What can I check from the ground before you come?
Run a key or a screwdriver point along a joint at eye level. Sound pointing resists it, and failed pointing gives way as loose sand. Then look at the lowest two courses for a white bloom or crumbling faces, and at the gable verge for gaps showing daylight. On a Verwood bungalow you can reach nearly all of that off a step ladder, which makes the phone call a great deal more useful.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying and repointing near Verwood
Bricklaying and repointing nearby
Our other trades in Verwood
Everything we do in Verwood Bricklaying and repointing, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a written price for your Verwood brickwork
Free site visit, free itemised quote, and a sample panel before anything permanent goes in the wall.