Repointing in Alderholt, with the mix named on the quote

Wear on walls in Alderholt shows up at the joint, on the brick face and at the chimney. 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.

Older solid walls, and lime. Roughly one property in four in Alderholt 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 in Alderholt 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.

Thomas scrapes at a few joints on each side of the house to see how far back the mortar has gone, looks at the chimney, and puts the price together himself. The quote spells out access, raking out, the mortar and its mix, how much of each wall is being done, any bricks to replace, and taking the waste away. Each elevation is raked, pointed and brushed back before the next one is opened.

Alderholt's walls split by age. The cottages from before the First World War are soft brick bedded in lime, and they should be repointed in lime. The eighties houses are harder brick in cement mortar, and the aim there is matching colour and strength. Most walls are reached from a tower in the garden, while a chimney or gable needs scaffold.

Soft brick is raked by hand, sheets go down under the work, and we sweep every evening. If more spalled bricks show once the old mortar is out, you have photos and a price before any are cut out. Repointing to match what is there counts as repair, not development: no planning application, no building control, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls shows how little sits in the way. Dorset Council is the authority, but with no conservation area and only a handful of listed buildings, nobody outside the job checks the specification on an ordinary house, so the mix and raking depth go in writing.

Mortar that has washed out of the joints lets wind-driven rain straight through a solid wall, and round a chimney it gets in behind the flashing as well. Look at which room the damp shows in and whether it comes after a wet, windy night, and photograph the outside of that wall.

On the first visit we check the joints, put a sheet over the worst area or point it temporarily, and quote for the whole wall once it has dried enough to see what is sound. Work is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If water is coming in, phone instead of filling in the form, and if we miss you we call back.

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Most villages around Alderholt have a conservation area boundary somewhere in the picture, and one side effect is a second pair of eyes on what goes back onto an old wall.

Alderholt has none, and its listed buildings, the Church of St James among them, are few, so on an ordinary house there is no consent to apply for, no officer to satisfy and no restriction on colour, texture or joint profile. For most repairs 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 Alderholt. 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.

Nearby places we also cover for repointing, with straight-line distances from Alderholt, and the other trades we offer in Alderholt itself.

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