Ashley Heath repointing, all of it at eye level
On a bungalow every joint gets looked at from a yard away, so the mix, the match and the strike are the whole job.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Your pointing is due when the joints have weathered back behind the brick, powder under a key, or sound hollow when you tap along a course. On the bungalows in Ashley Heath every joint sits at eye level, so the work is raking out by hand and matching the mix, the colour and the strike along the whole run. A cracked garden wall or a leaning gate pier is a rebuilding job, not pointing.
Failing pointing in Ashley Heath is usually spotted while doing something else. Cleaning the gutters and seeing sand in them. Weeding a border and finding the joints beside the downpipe have gone back a finger's depth. A flaky brick face under a window that gets worse each spring. Or a repair somebody did years ago that has stayed a different colour ever since.
All of that is mortar, not structure, and none of it means the wall is failing. We walk every elevation, scrape a few joints on each to see how deep the decay has gone, tap the courses for the hollow note that means the pointing has lost its grip, and photograph what we find. Back it comes in writing, itemised and split by elevation, with the faces we would leave alone said plainly. The survey and the quote are free.
The work
Mortar repairs on a modern Ashley Heath house
Cavity brickwork from the seventies and eighties. Half the houses in Ashley Heath went up between 1945 and 1982 and another quarter after that, so almost everything is cavity work: a single outer skin of fired brick in a cement and sand mortar, struck weather or bucket handle.
Mortar of that age rarely washes out the way a soft old joint does. It pits and opens at the arris, water stands in the hollow, and the first proper frost lifts flakes off the brick either side. Matching it means matching the sand and the gauge as well as the colour, so a trial panel goes up on a discreet elevation for you to see in daylight.
Raking out, and why not with a grinder. Joints come out to about twice their width, the perpends by hand. A disc cutter is quick on a long straight bed joint and it is also how a wall gets its arrises taken off, which is why plenty of cheap repointing looks worse after a year than what it replaced. Joints are damped down before filling so the mix cures rather than flashing off, then brushed back once it has taken up.
Spalled faces. Where a face has blown we cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it against a sample held on the wall, rather than filling the hollow with mortar that never matches and drops out within a couple of winters. On the Ashley Heath stock the damage collects under sills, beside downpipes and in the courses just above the damp proof course where a drive has been laid hard against the house.
Chimneys and the odd bit at height. Not every bungalow in Ashley Heath has a stack, but where there is one it is the oldest and coldest masonry on the building, with weather on four sides and nothing warming it. Its joints go friable long before anything at ground level, and the penetrating damp that follows shows on a ceiling. That wants a scaffold. Almost everything else on a single storey elevation is reachable from a tower.
Porch, garage and low front walls. The brickwork around a porch, either side of a garage opening or along the front of a plot has no shelter and often a coping that has stopped doing its job. Water gets into the top, freezes and works the joints apart from inside. Repointing the coping and the exposed face is short work.
The little that is genuinely old. Only a small share of the houses in Ashley Heath predate 1919, but where a property is solid wall rather than cavity the answer changes: an NHL lime or lime putty mix matched to the original sand, so the wall can still lose water through the joint. A hard modern mix on a soft old wall is the fastest way to lose the brick faces.
How it runs
Repointing a post-war house or bungalow, step by step
Walls in Ashley Heath were mostly built in cement mortar, so repointing is about matching what is there, not bringing back lime. Thomas looks at every elevation himself, scratches a few joints to see how deep the failure goes, and prices it. The written quote breaks out the tower or scaffold, raking out, the mortar and how it is matched, each elevation measured separately, brick replacement and disposal. Raking, pointing and cleaning down are all on that quote.
Bungalow walls in Ashley Heath are worked from the ground or a low tower, and a chimney gets a scaffold. Windows and doors are sheeted before raking starts, because the dust gets everywhere. The site is swept each evening and the spoil leaves with us. If a crack turns out to run through the bricks themselves, or a lintel is failing, you will have a photo and a figure in front of you before we go on.
Repointing like for like is repair, so there is nothing to apply for and nothing for building control. Ashley Heath has no conservation area and two listed entries, so on almost every address the mortar and joint profile are a technical choice. On the listed building, mortar counts as protected fabric, and listed building consent from Dorset Council comes first.
Cost
Joints, mix and height: pricing a repoint here
We do not price repointing by the square metre, because the depth and state of the joints decide the hours.
The weather side. The south west elevation of an Ashley Heath house takes the driven rain, and it is often the only wall that needs full repointing. Pricing that side on its own and leaving the rest of the house can be the sensible answer, and we will say so.
How the old mortar comes out. Hand raking hard cement is slow. A disc is faster but widens the joint and takes the arris off the brick, which shows once it is pointed. The quote should say which, and how far back the joints are raked.
Matching. Sand colour and joint profile are what the eye catches. A mix that is too strong for a softer facing brick holds water, and the face spalls in the first hard frost. Lime suits the few older solid walls in the area. On post-war brick a matched cement or hydraulic lime mix is normal.
Access. A detached bungalow is mostly ground and tower work, and a chalet with a dormer gable a little more. A chimney needs a proper platform, and the HSE roofwork page explains why that scaffold is its own line.
Put the same points to anyone else: how far back the joints are raked and with what tool, which mix goes in and how it was matched, how many spalled bricks are being replaced, and whether scaffold is in.
If water is getting in
Damp inside because the pointing has gone
If a damp patch has appeared on an inside wall after heavy rain, look at the pointing on the outside of that wall. Joints that have washed out let wind driven rain straight through, and on a chimney it finds the flashings as well.
Use the phone for this, not the form. We find where the water is coming in, sheet the worst of it if the weather is set against us, and price the elevation once the wall has dried enough to see what is sound. At Ashley Heath it is often the south west side, or a strip under a gutter that has overflowed for a few winters. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If no one answers, we return the call the moment we are able.
Worth knowing
Every joint on a bungalow is at eye level
More than half the homes in Ashley Heath are bungalows, and that changes a repointing job in a way people do not expect. On a two storey house nobody looks closely at the pointing above the ground floor windows, so a slight difference in colour is invisible from the pavement. On a single storey elevation the whole run of wall sits between waist and shoulder height. Every metre of it gets looked at, from a foot away.
So on this stock the matching and the strike are not finishing touches, they are the work. We mix in consistent batches rather than making up a fresh gauge whenever we run out, keep one person striking a given elevation so the profile does not drift, and finish at a corner or an opening rather than stopping halfway along a wall. It also means we would rather do a whole elevation than a patch.
Who you are dealing with
Who you get for a repoint in BH24
Repointing in Ashley Heath and its neighbours, St Leonards, St Ives, Ringwood and Verwood, is done from our base in Boscombe, 7.1 miles away. The council for these addresses is Dorset Council.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the company, registered in England and Wales, and its company number is 15471719 if you want to check it. Thomas Hannen owns the business and comes out to scratch the joints and price the job himself. Our Checkatrade page carries a verified customer's score of 10 out of 10. You are not charged for the site visit, and the itemised written quote is free as well. Before you book a visit in Ashley Heath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ashley Heath?
Most repairs in Ashley Heath 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.
| Question | In Ashley Heath |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Ashley Heath. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Ashley Heath, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, Ashley Heath has listed buildings. If yours is one, or stands in the grounds of one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ashley Heath. |
Questions
Questions about repointing in Ashley Heath
An old repair on our wall is still a different colour. Can that be sorted?
Usually, yes. A patch shows either because the sand was wrong or because the joint was struck to a different profile, and both are fixable by taking that mortar out and putting a matched mix back. We make up a trial panel first and let you look at it in daylight, because fresh mortar reads lighter than weathered mortar.
Do you need a scaffold to repoint a bungalow?
For the walls, generally not. Most of a single storey elevation is workable from a tower or trestles, which takes the biggest single line out of the quote. A chimney is the exception, because repointing a stack means standing there for hours with both hands busy. Where a scaffold is needed it appears as its own line.
What joint profile goes back on a seventies house?
Whatever the wall already carries, which on this stock is almost always bucket handle or weather struck. Both shed water off the joint instead of letting it stand on a flat shelf of mortar. We do not change a profile on a visible elevation without agreeing it with you first, because it alters how the whole wall reads.
Is there any lime pointing to be done in Ashley Heath?
Some, but not much: only a small fraction of the housing here is old enough to be solid wall, and those are the ones that need lime. If your walls are cavity, which almost all are, the right answer is a cement and sand mortar gauged a little softer than the brick and matched to the original sand.
How long would the outside of a bungalow take to repoint?
Days, not weeks, for a single elevation, and longer for the whole building, because hand raking is the slow part and there is more wall on a bungalow than people expect. The quote gives you working days per elevation and says what would push it, which is nearly always the weather.
Nearby, and next door
Repointing near Ashley Heath
Nearby places we also cover for repointing, with straight-line distances from Ashley Heath, and the other trades we offer in Ashley Heath itself.
Repointing nearby
Our other trades in Ashley Heath
Repointing guides
Lime or cement mortar: which do you need? Reading a repointing quote: rake out Listed building consent for repointing and re-renderingEverything we do in West Moors Repointing, all areas Every area we cover
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Ask for a trial panel before you agree the work
Thomas walks each elevation, tests the joints, photographs the wall and sends a written itemised quote with the access shown separately. Free.