Repointing exposed walls in Barton on Sea

The elevation facing the sea. The south west face here runs a decade ahead of the sheltered sides. Driven rain arrives with force enough to work into an open joint rather than run off it, so the mortar washes back, water stands in the recess and frost takes the arris off the brick. That is why we price by elevation.

Late fifties and sixties cavity brickwork. More than half of Barton on Sea went up between 1945 and 1982, the busiest years by a distance being the late fifties and early sixties. That is a single outer skin of fired brick in cement and sand, often gauged with a little lime, weather struck or bucket handle. The joint erodes at the arris rather than cracking, and the face goes in flakes once water sits in it. A trial panel goes up somewhere discreet, matched for sand, gauge, texture and colour as it will look weathered.

The older end of the town. A small share of the town predates 1919 and is solid wall rather than cavity: no gap behind the brick, so it sheds water only by evaporation through the joint and has to stay breathable. Those get an NHL lime or lime putty mix matched to the original sand, finished flush or slightly recessed. Either way the method is the same: joints out to twice their width by hand, the angle grinder left in the van, damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up.

Salt fretted faces. At just over a kilometre from the water, salt arrives as spray carried inland rather than clean rain. It soaks into the outer few millimetres of joint and brick, holds damp between showers, then crystallises as the wall dries and breaks the material apart. Spalling shows first under sills, beside downpipes and just above ground, and where a face has gone we cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it against a sample off the wall.

Squat stacks on single storey roofs. Four homes in ten here are bungalows, so there are a great many short wide chimneys with weather on all four sides and nothing warming them. Their joints go loose and friable long before the house walls do. We repoint the stack, renew the flaunching round the pots and make good the junctions, priced as its own line. A low stack sometimes comes off a tower; anything on a main ridge is a scaffold.

Communal elevations. Getting on for a fifth of the homes here are flats, often in blocks taking the weather on one whole face, and we price for a management company as readily as for a single owner. Major works are usually consulted on under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.

No rate per square metre: the square metres tell you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.

Getting to it. A cliff top bungalow with a squat stack, a nineteen sixties semi with one gable pointed at the sea and a block of flats on the clifftop road are three different set ups. A chimney or gable wants a scaffold, a low wall a tower or nothing at all. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules make it a priced line.

The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick the only safe way, because a disc cutter widens the joint and takes the arris off. How deep the joints come back, and whether faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does. The mix matters as much: cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first frost, while lime is the right answer on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked, by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it was matched, how many spalled bricks are cut out, and whether the scaffold is in. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

There is nothing between these houses and the Channel, and BS 8104, the code that grades walls for wind driven rain, puts this coast at the severe end of the scale. The obvious effect is how fast a joint wears out. The less obvious one is that it decides when the work can be done at all.

Mortar has almost no strength for its first day in the joint. A wet south westerly off the water will wash a freshly struck joint back out, and it will still look filled from the ground while being hollow behind. Lime is worse, because it sets slowly by taking up carbon dioxide from the air, and a lime joint caught by frost before it has cured is finished. So on the seaward elevation we work to the forecast rather than the diary and come back rather than push on through a bad afternoon.

Two things follow. Do not book a seaward elevation in lime for the back end of the year if it can wait for spring. And ask anybody quoting what happens when the weather turns.

We cover Barton on Sea, Barton Common, New Milton, Bashley, Milford on Sea and along to Highcliffe, broadly BH25, with New Forest District Council as the authority. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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 prices every job himself. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit and the written quote are free.