Boldre repointing, and knowing when a wall does not need it

Sills, heads and the courses under a window. This is where modern brickwork genuinely does fail. Water runs off a sill and lands on the same strip of wall every time it rains, and if the sill has lost its throat or the end of it is not turned properly the run is concentrated into a few courses.

Those joints open at the arris, go crumbling behind the face, and once water can stand in them a hard frost lifts the surface off. We cut them out to a depth of about twice the joint width, damp them down, fill, and brush the face back once the mix has taken up. That is a morning's work. Leaving it is how you end up replacing bricks.

The courses just above ground level. Where a drive, a patio or a raised border has been laid up against a house, the bottom courses stay wet and the damp proof course stops doing its job. Joints there wash out, faces spall, and pointing alone will not fix it if the ground is still bridging the wall. We will say what needs moving as well as what needs pointing.

Stacks and flaunching. A chimney in Boldre has weather on four sides and nothing heating it from inside, so it is the oldest and coldest masonry on almost any house and its joints go friable years ahead of the walls, and the penetrating damp that follows shows on a bedroom ceiling rather than at ground level. On a house standing on its own down a lane with nothing sheltering it, the stack does the work of a whole exposed elevation. We repoint the stack, cut out frost damaged bricks and renew the flaunching round the pots in one visit, because the access is the honest bulk of that cost and paying for it twice is waste.

The older properties in the parish. A small share of the housing around Boldre predates 1919, and those are solid walls with no cavity, which only shed water by letting it evaporate back out through the joint, so the wall has to stay breathable. They want an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to the original sand, raked by hand to about twice the joint width, with the angle grinder left in the van. The finish on period brickwork of that sort is usually flush or slightly recessed rather than the weather struck or bucket handle joint on later work. Nothing ruins one of those walls faster than cement, and undoing it takes far longer than putting it in did.

Blown faces, cut out rather than filled. Where a brick face has gone we cut the brick out and turn or replace it against a sample held on the wall. A mortar patch in the hollow never matches and falls out inside a couple of winters. On a modern Boldre wall the match is usually straightforward; on a soft old brick it means a trial panel you look at in daylight before we carry on.

Garden walls and copings. On modern property in Boldre this is where genuine repointing is needed most. A freestanding wall weathers on two faces and along the top at once, it has no roof over it, and the coping is what fails. Water into the top, then a frost, and the wall starts to come apart from inside. Repointing the top courses and rebedding the coping is quick work; a leaning wall is not.

A price per square metre tells you little about repointing until someone has scraped the joints. How deep the damage goes. Joints weathered only at the surface rake out quickly. Joints washed back deep, or crumbling to the touch, take much longer. Spalled faces have to be cut out and replaced.

The mortar. Post-war and eighties brick in Boldre is hard and was laid in cement, so a cement and lime mix is right for it. The older cottages have soft brick in lime, and putting cement on those traps water behind the face until frost blows it off. Lime is slower to mix and cure, and it needs protecting from rain and frost while it goes off.

Raking method. A disc is fast but can widen joints and nick soft brick. Hand raking is slower and is the only safe choice on old walls.

Getting to it. A detached house with its own stack, a terrace sharing a gable and a garden wall between two plots each need different access. A stack or a gable means scaffold under the work at height rules.

Before you sign anything, ask any other repointer how deep they will rake, by hand or with a disc, what mix they plan to use, and whether the scaffold is in the price.

From Boscombe, where our base is, to Boldre is about thirteen miles. We repoint in the village, Pilley, South Baddesley, East Boldre and Sway, and down into Lymington. If your house is listed, consent for mortar work comes from the New Forest National Park Authority.

Look us up as Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719; Companies House lists it for anyone to see. Thomas Hannen owns the firm and scrapes the joints himself before pricing them. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Both the visit and the itemised written quote are free. Before you book a visit in Boldre, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Boldre 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.