Mortar repairs and repointing in Beacon Hill
Joints raked by hand, a mix matched to the wall rather than to the van, and the access priced on its own line.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Your joints are due once the mortar has weathered back behind the brick, crumbles when you run a key along it, or a course sounds hollow when tapped. On a Beacon Hill house built in cement mortar, the job is seldom lime against cement. It is raking out the elevations that have gone and matching the gauge. A cracked wall or a pier that has moved needs rebuilding, which is a different job.
A Beacon Hill wall due for repointing shows it on the path, in the joints, on the brick and inside the house. Sand turning up on the path below a wall. A joint you can push a screwdriver into. A brick face flaking off under a windowsill. And, most often, a damp mark inside on the wall that takes the driven rain.
Every one of those is mortar and none means the wall is in trouble. We look at each face of your Beacon Hill house rather than the one you rang about, scrape a couple of joints on every elevation to see how far back the decay goes, and photograph it. You get a written itemised quote, elevation by elevation, saying which faces are due now and which we would leave. Neither the visit nor the quote costs anything.
The work
Beacon Hill walls, and where their joints give out
Reading the wall before mixing anything. Beacon Hill has a few older cottages with solid walls among mostly post-war and later cavity built houses. On a solid wall the only route water has out is the joint, so the mortar must stay softer and more permeable than the brick, which means an NHL lime or lime putty mix matched to the original sand.
On a Beacon Hill cavity wall the outer skin is a cement and sand mortar and the match is about the sand, the gauge and the colour. Getting that the wrong way round turns a tidy repair into a wall with spalled faces, so we establish which you have before quoting.
Nineteen sixties to eighties outer skins. The post-war houses in Beacon Hill were pointed in a mortar that fails gently. It erodes at the arris, water stands in the open joint, and frost lifts flakes off the brick faces beside it. Joints come out to roughly twice their width, perpends by hand, and the angle grinder stays in the van. We damp the joints down before filling, then brush them back once the mortar has taken up.
Newer walls, and why they fail early when they do. The newer estate houses in Beacon Hill are young for repointing. When one of those walls is already open it is nearly always a local cause rather than age: a gutter running over onto the same strip of brick for years, a patio raised above the damp proof course, or joints struck too dry the day they were built. We deal with the cause at the same time.
Spalled brick faces. A blown face gets cut out and the brick turned or replaced against a sample held on the wall. Filling the hollow with mortar leaves a patch that never matches and falls out inside a couple of winters. Frost damage collects under sills, beside downpipes and in the first courses above the damp proof course.
Chimneys, and everything else at height. A Beacon Hill stack has weather on all four sides and nothing warming it from inside, so its joints go friable years ahead of the walls below, and open joints up there come out as penetrating damp on a bedroom ceiling. That is work at height and wants a proper platform, priced as its own line. A bungalow or single storey extension will often come off a tower instead.
How it runs
Raking out and repointing, one elevation at a time
Thomas comes out to Beacon Hill and checks the joints himself, scratching at a few to see how deep the old mortar has gone and whether the bricks are sound. The quote then lists access, raking out, the mortar mix and how it was matched, each elevation measured on its own, any brick replacement, and disposal.
We work one elevation at a time, with one point of contact throughout. Windows, sills and the drive are covered while joints are raked, because the dust travels. No wall is left raked out and open overnight in bad weather; it is pointed or sheeted. Each day ends with the ground swept and the old mortar bagged and taken away. If raking uncovers cracked or spalled bricks that nobody could have spotted, you are sent a photograph with a price before any are replaced.
Like for like pointing is a repair: no planning application, and building control plays no part. There is no conservation area here, so on an ordinary house no officer has to agree the colour, the sand or the joint finish. Check the Historic England list for your own address all the same. Dorset Council is the authority, and listed building consent would only matter on a listed property somewhere else.
Cost
Joint depth, mix and the weather side of the house
Repointing is not priced by the square metre. The same area of wall can be a few days or a fortnight, depending on the joints.
Access to each elevation. A ground floor wall comes off a hop-up. A gable or a chimney stack needs a scaffold, and a semi where the gable is shared with next door needs both owners on side. Under the work at height rules, access is priced as its own line.
How far back the joints go. Mortar should be raked back to sound material, normally about twice the joint's height. Hand raking is slow. A disc is quicker but can widen the joint and chip the arris, the brick's edge, so we use it carefully or not at all.
The mix. New mortar should be a little weaker than the brick, so movement and frost damage go into the joint and not the face. On most modern bricks a cement, lime and sand mix does that. A pure lime mortar suits a softer, older brick. Get it wrong and the face spalls in the first hard frost.
The exposed walls. Gables facing open ground take the most driven rain, and they usually need the deepest raking.
Before you agree to another quote, ask how deep the joints will be raked and by what method, what mix is proposed and why, and how many damaged bricks are allowed for.
If water is getting in
Damp patches on the inside of an outside wall
When joints on a Beacon Hill wall have washed out, wind-driven rain gets through the brick to the inside face, and around a chimney it finds the flashings too. If you see a damp patch that grows after a storm, ring rather than filling in the form.
The first visit finds the worst joints, sheets them or points them temporarily if the weather is against us, and checks the gutter and downpipe above, which are often the real cause. We price the full elevation once the wall has dried enough to show what is sound. Booked work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm; ring for this, and if we are up a scaffold and miss you, we call back as soon as we are down.
Worth knowing
No conservation area, and what that frees up
Beacon Hill is one of the few places we work where the mortar is purely a technical decision. There is no conservation area covering it, and unless your address is on the Historic England list nobody has to approve a colour, a sand or a joint profile before a wall is touched.
A few miles away, on a listed cottage or inside a conservation area boundary, the mix and the strike are part of what is protected and the specification has to be agreed first. Here it does not, and that takes weeks out of the front of a job.
What it does not do is make the choice free. The wall still decides the mix, and the wall does not care about planning: pick a mortar harder than the brick and the faces will spall whether or not anyone consented to it. The other thing worth weighing is your neighbours' half of the elevation, because on a semi the joint you strike is the one somebody else has to match one day. We write the mix and the profile into the quote so the decision gets made once, on purpose.
Who you are dealing with
The repointing firm behind this page
From our base in Boscombe to Beacon Hill is 9.8 miles, and we repoint across BH16, from Lytchett Minster and Upton up to Corfe Mullen and over to Broadstone. Dorset Council is the planning and building control authority.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and it is run by its owner, Thomas Hannen. He is the one who scratches out a joint, measures the elevations and prices your wall. One verified customer has given us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. There is no charge for the site visit or for the written quote, which itemises every part. Before you book a visit in Beacon Hill, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Beacon Hill?
Most repairs in Beacon Hill 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 Beacon Hill |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Beacon Hill. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Beacon Hill, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Nothing in Beacon Hill is on the statutory list, so listed building consent does not come into it. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Beacon Hill. |
Questions
Questions about repointing in Beacon Hill
Our house is only from the nineties. Can it need repointing already?
A nineties wall in Beacon Hill can need repointing already, though usually only in patches. On a wall that young, open joints point at a cause, not at age: rainwater running over the same strip for years, paving built up above the damp proof course, or joints struck before the mortar had taken up. We find the reason first, then point the affected area, not the whole house.
How much of the old mortar actually comes out?
About twice the width of the joint as a rule. Any shallower and the new mortar has nothing to grip, so it sits as a skin and drops out. Where the decay runs deeper than that we rake back to sound mortar, and the quote says so.
Can you do only the gable that takes the weather?
Yes, and quite often that is what we recommend. Elevations weather at very different rates, so the exposed face can be a decade ahead of the sheltered ones on the same house. We price face by face and mark the ones we would leave.
Our extension is pointed a different colour to the house. Can they be matched?
They can be brought much closer. The usual cause is a different sand rather than a different cement, so we take a sample of the original from somewhere sheltered and make up trial panels until the colour and texture sit right. Judge the panel on how it will look weathered, because fresh mortar always reads lighter.
Should the brickwork be sealed or painted once it is pointed?
We would say no on almost every wall here. A sealer or a masonry paint stops water getting in and also stops what is already in there getting out, and a wall that cannot dry pushes the moisture through the brick faces instead. Matched mortar in a properly raked joint is what keeps a wall dry.
Nearby, and next door
Repointing near Beacon Hill
Nearby places we also cover for repointing, with straight-line distances from Beacon Hill, and the other trades we offer in Beacon Hill itself.
Repointing nearby
Our other trades in Beacon Hill
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 Corfe Mullen Repointing, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Find out which elevations are genuinely due
Thomas scrapes the joints on every face, photographs what he finds and puts the price in writing, itemised, at no cost to you.