Bricklaying in Wareham

Tired joints. The older walls in the middle of town, and 15.1 per cent of Wareham predates 1919, are soft brick laid in lime, and that mortar was always meant to be the part that gives way, not the brick.

Once the joints have washed back behind the face, water sits on the brick edge and frost does the rest. We rake out by hand, back to at least twice the width of the joint, and we do not run a disc cutter across soft brick because it takes the arris off every brick it touches. It goes back in a mix matched for colour, texture and strength, which on North Street and West Street usually means a natural hydraulic lime, not a cement mortar. The joint profile is not decoration either: a flush or slightly recessed joint suits old brick, weather struck or bucket handle suits later work, and the profile decides how the wall sheds water. Where a face has blown, the brick is cut out whole and replaced rather than filled, and in the old town that means a reclaimed or handmade brick, not anything off a modern pallet.

Boundary, garden and retaining walls. Wareham is full of them, including the walls holding ground back where the streets drop away towards the water. A retaining wall is a different animal from a garden wall: it is holding wet ground, so it wants weep holes and a drained backing or it will bow and eventually go over. The town sits in flood zones 2 and 3 with the Piddle a hundred and fifty metres off, and ground that stays saturated is ground that moves, so the footing under a leaning wall is the first thing we look at. We rebuild leaning sections off a proper footing, re-bed coping that has lifted, and put gate piers back where a car has caught them.

A stack takes weather from every side and is normally the worst brickwork on the house: repointing above the roof line, renewing the flaunching around the pots, and rebuilding the top courses where the mortar has gone to nothing. That is scaffold work, not a ladder job. Out on the post-war housing round the edge of Wareham, and 52.0 per cent of the stock is 1945 to 1982, the walls are cavity work and they fail differently. A rusting lintel over a window lifts the courses above it. Wall ties corrode and push the outer leaf out, which shows as a horizontal crack every few courses. A bowed panel gets cut out and rebuilt in stretcher bond rather than patched, and we tell you which cracks are movement and which are the wall doing what it has always done. New work is the rest: extensions, garden rooms and porches, with a blockwork inner leaf, a damp proof course at the right height and a facing brick chosen to sit with the house, not shout at it.

Brickwork is not priced by the square metre. Identical-looking walls can be very different jobs once you look at what they are built from and what they stand on.

The brick and the mortar. In the old town the bricks are often soft and handmade, laid in a lime mortar. Matching them means reclaimed or specially made bricks and a lime mix, and the work is slower. On the estates of the late sixties and early seventies the brick is machine made and cement mortar is normal, so a match is far easier to find.

What it stands on. The ground under much of Wareham is clay that shrinks in a dry summer and swells in a wet winter. A new garden wall needs a footing deep enough to sit below that movement, and a cracked wall has to be read properly before it is rebuilt, or the crack comes straight back.

Reaching it. A terrace front onto the pavement, a semi with a side path and a tall gable are three different set ups, and how long the platform stays up matters as much as its size. The work at height rules are why access is priced on its own.

When comparing, ask how the bricks will be matched, whether the old joints are raked by hand or by disc, and how deep the footing for a new wall will go.

We work in Wareham, 12.5 miles from our base in Boscombe, and in Stoborough, Sandford, Ridge and Wool, across the BH20 postcodes. Planning and building control sit with Dorset Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719, and it is Thomas Hannen's business. Before you book a visit in Wareham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

He surveys the wall with you in person and prices it himself, instead of working off a photograph. On Checkatrade, a verified customer marked us 10 out of 10. You pay nothing for the visit or for the quote, which comes written and itemised.

Most repairs in Wareham need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.