Repointing in Alderholt, with the mix named on the quote
Joints raked by hand, a mortar sampled off your own wall, and an honest answer about whether an elevation is actually due.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Nothing in Alderholt controls what your brickwork looks like, so the mortar that goes back into your joints is decided by the wall and by whoever you hire, and by nobody else. That makes getting the mix right a matter for the quote rather than for the council.
Where it starts
The reasons people call us out here
Three things account for most of them. A joint you can get a finger into on an elevation that faces the open ground. Brick faces peeling away in thin flakes, low down or under a sill. And a chimney dropping sand and grit into the gutter, noticed only when somebody clears them.
Alderholt is an unusual mix of buildings for a village this size. About a quarter is older solid wall property and a third went up in the nineteen eighties and after, so two houses a hundred yards apart can want opposite treatments. That is the point of the survey. We look at every elevation, scrape and tap the joints rather than judging them on colour, work out how deep the failure goes, and photograph it. You get it back in writing with each face priced separately, free.
The work
The mortar jobs we get called to in Alderholt
Older solid walls, and lime. Roughly one property in four here predates 1919, and those have no cavity behind the brick. The wall gets rid of water by letting it evaporate back out through the joint, so the mortar has to stay softer and more permeable than the brick. Those joints are raked by hand to twice their width, the angle grinder left in the van, and filled with an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to match the original sand for colour and texture. The finish goes back to the profile already on the wall, usually flush or a little recessed.
Hard pointing taken back off. A good number of those older walls were repointed in sand and cement at some point in the last fifty years. A dense joint stops the wall breathing, so the water leaves through the brick face instead and frost takes the face away. The joints stay looking respectable while the bricks crumble, which is the wall people misread most. Cutting a hard mix out of soft brickwork without damaging the arris is slow, and it is the only repair that works.
The eighties and nineties skins. More than a third of Alderholt was built between 1983 and 2008, and that brickwork is a different animal: a fired brick outer skin in a dense modern cement mortar, struck bucket handle. It does not erode the way older mortar does. It crazes and opens along the line where mortar meets brick, and once water stands in that line the frost gets into it. On a wall of that age our answer is quite often that it is not due yet, and we will say so.
The post war middle. Around three homes in ten went up between 1945 and 1982, when mortar was frequently gauged with lime as well as cement, softer than what came after. Matching means matching the gauge and the sand, not just the colour, so we take a sample from somewhere sheltered and make up a trial panel to judge in daylight first.
Blown faces, cut out. Where the face of a brick has already gone we cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it against a sample from the wall. Packing the hollow with mortar leaves something that never matches and falls out in a couple of winters. Frost damage gathers under sills, beside downpipes and in the courses above the damp proof course wherever a drive or a path has been laid up against the house.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting. The quote is itemised: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open overnight, the site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. Anything nobody could have foreseen gets a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Repointing like for like is repair rather than development, so there is no planning application and nothing for building control to sign off. Alderholt is unusual on this patch in having no conservation area and no listed entries at all, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out how little sits in the way. Dorset Council is the authority, and nobody outside the job is checking the specification, which is why we put the mix and the raking depth in writing.
Cost
What decides the price of a repointing job
No rate per square metre, because the square metres tell you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.
Getting to it. A pre-1919 cottage with a stack on the gable, an eighties detached house you can reach off a tower and a bungalow with a low porch return are three different set ups. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules are why access is a priced line rather than one absorbed into a rate.
The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick it is the only safe way. How deep the joints come back, and whether the faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does.
Matching is the part that shows. Too strong a mix is the classic mistake: cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first hard frost. Lime is slower to work and to cure, and it is the right answer on most pre-1919 walls.
Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs, so ask each one how deep the joints are raked and whether the scaffold is in the price.
If water is getting in
Open joints, and water coming through the wall
Ring rather than use the form. A wall with the joints washed out lets driven rain straight through to the inside face, and on a chimney it finds the flashings too. We come and look, sheet or temporarily point the worst of it, and price the full elevation once it has dried enough to see what is sound. Out here it is nearly always a gable taking the weather straight off open ground. If water is coming through, ring and say so rather than leave a message, because that changes when we come. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
No planning officer is going to check your mortar here
Most villages around Alderholt have a conservation area boundary or a listed entry somewhere in the picture, and one side effect is a second pair of eyes on what goes back onto an old wall. Alderholt has neither, so there is no consent to apply for, no officer to satisfy and no restriction on colour, texture or joint profile. For most jobs that is an advantage: nobody will hold up a repair on a nineteen eighties house over the shade of the sand.
The catch is on the older quarter of the village. Nothing stops somebody pointing a soft pre-1919 wall in a strong sand and cement mix, which is why it keeps happening. The only protection those walls have is the specification you agree, so make it explicit. Ask for the mortar to be named on the quote, the raking depth stated, hand raking rather than a disc written in on soft brick, and the joint profile named. On a soft wall the difference between the right answer and the wrong one shows up as brick faces on the path within a few winters.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Alderholt, Cranborne, Fordingbridge, Verwood and the villages either side of the county line, broadly SP6, under Dorset Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. 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
Alderholt questions we get asked
Our house went up in the eighties. Can the pointing be failing already?
It can, but more often it is not. Modern dense mortar does not weather back the way older mixes do. What you usually see at that age is a fine crack where mortar meets brick, worst on the elevation facing the weather, which is worth sealing where it has opened but rarely a full repoint. We would rather tell you to leave it than take the work.
What should a repointing quote actually say about the mortar?
Name the mix, the depth and the finish. Something like an NHL lime gauged to a sample off the wall, raked to twice the joint width by hand, struck flush. That is a specification you can hold somebody to. Repoint front elevation is not, because it leaves all three to whoever turns up on the day.
Does a stronger mortar make the wall stronger?
No, and that is the misconception behind most of the damage we see. The mortar beds the bricks and is the part meant to wear out. A joint stronger than the brick around it stops being sacrificial: the movement and moisture it used to absorb go into the brick instead, and the brick face fails. Weaker than the brick, every time.
The chimney is shedding grit into the gutter. How urgent is that?
Urgent enough to look at, not urgent enough to panic. Grit in the gutter means the joints in the stack are open, and an open stack lets water into the roof space where it shows as a stain on a ceiling. It is also the one part of the building nobody can inspect from the ground. We look at it on the free visit.
Our bricks are a mix of colours. Will replacements ever look right?
A varied wall is the easy case. Where every brick is the same, one replacement stands out; where the wall runs from red to buff, a sourced brick disappears into the range. We hold samples against the wall before buying anything, turn sound bricks wherever the back face is good, and scatter replacements rather than set them in a block.
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Get the mix written down before anyone starts
Thomas comes out, tests the joints, photographs each elevation and puts the mortar, the depth and the price in writing, at no cost to you.