Bricklaying and repointing in Woodlands

Cracks, and what caused them. This is where most Woodlands jobs start. We look at the shape of the crack, not just its width. A stepped crack following the bed joints and hairline at one end is telling you something different from a straight vertical split through the bricks themselves. The ground here shrinks and swells, so we check what is planted nearby, what the footing is likely to be, and whether a gully or a soakaway is emptying next to it, with the Fletchwood tributary forty metres off and flood zone 2 over part of the village. Where the movement has stopped, we cut out and stitch the cracked courses with helical bars bedded into the joints, rebuild the worst of it and repoint. Where it has not stopped, we say so and tell you what needs looking at before any bricklayer touches it.

Boundary walls, and what the trees are doing to them. Plots here are big and the walls are long, old and sitting on very little footing, with mature planting either side. A root does not need to lift a wall to break it, it only needs to dry the ground under one end of it. We rebuild bowed and cracked lengths off a proper base, put a movement joint in where a long run needs one, reset copings so the head of the wall sheds water, and tie gate piers in rather than leave them standing on the end of a wall. On a stack it is the same story from the top down: the flaunching goes, then the pointing on the top courses, then it leans, and we rebuild from below the damage and put the access on the quote as its own line so you can see what the scaffold is costing rather than have it buried in a total.

Repointing here is usually one or two elevations, not four. We rake out by hand to roughly twice the joint width, deep enough to key and no deeper, and keep a disc cutter away from soft old brick because the cut widens the joint for good and takes the arris off. Back in goes a matched mix: an NHL lime on the older solid walls, and 18.7 per cent of Woodlands predates 1919 with another 17.8 per cent between the wars, a measured cement and sand mix on the post-war work, which is 46.5 per cent of it and peaks in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Blown brick is cut out and replaced one at a time, matched for size, texture and colour, reclaimed or handmade where the wall is period, and we find out what soaked it first. On the post-war cavity houses we get horizontal cracking every fifth or sixth bed joint where a tie has corroded and jacked the stretcher bond, and cracked lintels over garage and patio door openings; ties are replaced from outside without taking the wall down. New work is the rest: extensions, garden rooms and brick plinths under timber outbuildings and stables, with footings sized for the ground rather than for the drawing.

No rate per square metre. Access first: a detached house with a stack standing above the ridge, a bungalow you can barrow all the way round and a stable block at the end of a soft track 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. Stitching a crack and rebuilding a bowed length are priced by the hour, not by the metre. Ask what the mix is and whether the scaffold is in.

Woodlands is at the far end of our patch, about twenty miles out, so we plan work in the Forest rather than dash to it and we will be straight with you about when we can be there. We cover SO40 and the villages around it, Netley Marsh, Ashurst, Bartley, Cadnam and Minstead, along with the rest of the New Forest.

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.