Bricklaying and repointing in West Parley
Repointing, brick repair, damp low courses, boundary walls and chimney stacks in West Parley, Longham and the Stour side of BH22.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Bricklaying and repointing
Damp low courses and blown brick faces in West Parley
West Parley sits on the low ground running down to the Stour, and on brickwork that shows up from the bottom of the wall upwards rather than from the top down. Nine times out of ten what has actually failed here is the plinth, the courses either side of the damp proof course and the joints on the elevation that catches the weather off the water meadows. That is what you want priced, and it is a much smaller job than repointing a house.
The calls we take here follow a pattern. Brick faces flaking away in a band a foot or two above the path. A joint you can push a finger into on the south west side. A damp patch inside a ground floor room that turns out to be a border banked over the damp proof course rather than anything wrong with the plaster. A boundary wall down towards the meadows that leans a bit further every wet winter.
We come out and walk the whole perimeter before anybody quotes. Parley mixes older solid walled cottages near the church with a lot of post-war cavity brick, and the two want completely different mortar, so what the wall is made of gets settled first. Then you get a straight answer on what needs doing now, what will keep, and an itemised written quote for whichever of it you want. Site visit and quote are both free.
The work
The brickwork jobs we do around West Parley
The plinth and the damp proof course. This is the job Parley gives us more than any other. The surface water risk here is high even though the Stour is the best part of a kilometre off, so the bottom of a wall stays wet longer after rain, and if the ground outside has crept up over the years the damp proof course ends up bridged. Raised borders, a second drive laid over the first, decking rails, a soakaway that has stopped taking water in a wet winter: all of them do it. We take the ground level back down below the dpc, cut out the soft brick, and repoint the plinth in a mix that suits a wall that gets wet, because a hard cement joint low down traps water in the brick rather than letting the wall breathe. Approved Document H sets out where surface water is allowed to go.
Air bricks. Half the suspended timber floors around here are being starved of air by something outside the wall. Air bricks get rendered over, buried by a raised path, blocked with a shrub or filled with cement by somebody who thought they were a draught. We cut them back open, replace cracked ones, and where the ground has genuinely risen we fit a periscope vent so the opening clears the new level. It is a small piece of bricklaying that does more for a damp ground floor than most of what gets sold for it.
Repointing here is usually one elevation, not four. Joints are raked by hand to twice their width, deep enough to key and no deeper, and a disc cutter stays away from soft old brick. What goes back is matched, the sand chosen for colour and grain against what came out, and you sign off a sample panel on your own wall first. The boundary walls along the lanes and around the paddocks mostly sit on next to no footing in ground that moves when it is saturated, so we reset or replace coping, rebuild bowed lengths off a proper base and tie a gate pier into the wall rather than leave it perched on the end. Bungalows are 36.4 per cent of Parley and detached houses another 35.2 per cent, nearly all of it cavity work: horizontal cracking every fifth or sixth bed joint where a tie has corroded, a cracked lintel over a garage opening, cracks stepping up from a window corner. Ties are replaced from outside without taking the wall down.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Repointing and like-for-like brick repair are repair, so at an ordinary West Parley address there is nothing to apply for. There is no conservation area over the village, but the parish has four listed entries, and on a listed building or wall even plain repointing counts as alteration and needs listed building consent from Dorset Council before a chisel goes near it. Changing the appearance of an elevation rather than putting it back can need planning permission, and the Planning Portal sets out where that line falls. A rebuilt boundary wall has height limits of its own under the guidance on walls, gates and fences. A lintel or an underpinned footing goes through building control, and on a shared wall the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 puts a notice period on it. We sort that at the survey.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
No rate per square metre. Access first: a cottage gable tight against a lane, a bungalow you can barrow all the way round and a detached house with a stack above the ridge are three different set ups. How long the platform stands matters as much as its size, and work at height rules are why it is a priced line. Then the joints, and on plinth work how much ground has to come down before anybody points anything. Ask what the mix is 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, and the first visit is about making it safe. Around Parley it is usually a boundary wall that has leaned further after a saturated winter, or a pier clipped by something turning off the main road. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
Wet ground, and what it does to the bottom of a wall
Parley is not in the mapped river flood zones, but surface water is a real and mapped risk across the village, and the Stour is close enough that the water table sits high after a wet spell. For brickwork that matters in one specific way: the wall is not being attacked from above, it is being kept damp from below.
A wall that never fully dries out will lose its brick faces to the first hard frost, and it will do it again after any repair that does not deal with the water. You can check your own address on the government flood risk service in a couple of minutes, and it is worth doing before you spend anything on the outside of the house.
What to do about it is unglamorous and it works. Get the ground outside the wall back below the damp proof course, by 150mm if you can manage it, and keep borders, gravel and paving off the brickwork. Make sure every downpipe ends in a gully that is actually taking water, and that any soakaway has somewhere to go rather than sitting full all winter. Clear the air bricks.
Then, when you point, use a mix softer than the brick so the joint weathers and the face does not, and leave the wall breathable. The one thing we would talk you out of here is a water repellent coating on a solid wall. It looks like the obvious answer to a damp elevation, and on a wall that is wet from the ground up it seals moisture in and makes the spalling worse.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
West Parley is about four and a half miles from the yard, so it is one of the closest places we work and there is no travel loaded into the price. We cover BH22 and the villages either side of it, Longham, Ferndown, Hampreston, Hurn and Bearwood, along with the rest of east Dorset.
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
West Parley questions we get asked
Water pools on our drive in heavy rain. Does that matter?
It does, because West Parley falls in a high surface water band even though it sits outside the river flood zones, with the Lower Stour the best part of a kilometre away. Water with nowhere to go stands against the base of a wall and works into the joints from below. Where a drive falls back towards the house, I would rather correct the fall than point the same three courses twice.
Most of the street went up together. Does that show?
In the mortar, plainly. West Parley is 57.8% post war stock, 28.1% of it from the late sixties and early seventies, so whole roads share one mortar mix, one brick and one age of wall tie. When the joints start going on one house, the rest are usually within a year or two of the same. It also means I have a fair idea what I will find before arriving.
Nothing on our road is attached. Does that help?
It helps with access. West Parley is 36.4% bungalows and 35.2% detached, with semis down at 3.3%, so most jobs here have four elevations you can walk right around and no party line to stop at. Each side can be priced on its own and the access equipment moves round instead of being struck and rebuilt. No neighbour has to agree to anything before a start.
The damp patch is indoors. Why look outside?
Because on the post war cavity walls that make up most of West Parley, the water gets in outside and crosses over. A failed joint, a cracked cill or mortar bridging the cavity lets it run down the inner leaf, and it appears on the inside a good distance from where it entered. Plastering over it hides it until spring. I trace it from outside first and decide about the inside after.
You are close by. How soon can Thomas come out?
West Parley is 4.5 miles from the yard, so fitting in a visit is easy and it rarely means waiting long. Thomas Hannen owns the firm and prices every job on site himself, which is why the figure does not move once work starts. The visit and the written itemised quote are free, and the quote splits the work by elevation so you can stage it over two seasons.
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Bricklaying and repointing near West Parley
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Tell us what the wall is doing and we will come and look at it. Free site visit, free itemised written quote, and a straight answer on what can wait.