Boldre repointing, and knowing when a wall does not need it
Mostly modern brickwork here, so the job is usually the sills, the stack and the garden wall rather than the whole elevation.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most of the brickwork around Boldre is modern. Better than four homes in ten here went up between 1983 and 2008, and on a wall of that age a full repoint is usually the wrong answer. What has failed is a handful of joints in a few predictable places, not the elevation, and the honest quote says so.
That is not what people expect to hear, so it is worth saying early. A modern facing brick is dense and fired hard, and it was laid in a cement mortar deliberately made a little weaker than the brick. That is the right way round, and it means a wall from the eighties can look tired long before it is anywhere near due.
The calls we get here are mostly about specific things. Grit and sand collecting in a gutter under a stack. A joint you can put a key into on the west gable and nowhere else. A straight vertical crack running down an elevation that turns out not to be a crack at all. And on the older properties scattered through the parish, a soft brick wall pointed in cement by somebody who did not ask what was underneath. The survey covers the whole building, not the wall you rang about: joints scraped at two heights on every face, the loose ones marked, and the lot photographed. What comes back is a written itemised quote that separates what is due now from what we would leave. The site visit costs you nothing.
The work
What actually needs pointing, and what does not
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 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 that is a fair share of the old fabric work we do here.
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 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 this is the commonest genuine repointing job by a distance. 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.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting. The quote is itemised: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open overnight, the site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. Anything nobody could have foreseen gets a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Repointing like for like is repair rather than development, so there is no planning application and nothing for building control to sign off. Boldre sits inside the New Forest National Park, so the Authority rather than the district council is the planning authority here. There is no conservation area of its own and eleven listed entries in the area. On a listed building works that affect the character of a listed building need consent, and mortar is part of that fabric, so consent comes before a joint is opened. the Authority's interactive property map settles an address in a couple of minutes, and we check it before we price anything.
Cost
What decides the price of a repointing job
No rate per square metre, because the square metres tell you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.
Getting to it. A detached house on a lane with its own stack, a terrace of three with a shared gable and a garden wall between two plots need three different platforms. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules are why access is a priced line rather than one absorbed into a rate.
The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick it is the only safe way. How deep the joints come back, and whether the faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does.
Matching is the part that shows. Too strong a mix is the classic mistake: cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first hard frost. Lime is slower to work and to cure, and it is the right answer on most pre-1919 walls.
Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs, so ask each one how deep the joints are raked and whether the scaffold is in the price.
If water is getting in
Open joints, and water coming through the wall
Ring rather than use the form. A wall with the joints washed out lets driven rain straight through to the inside face, and on a chimney it finds the flashings too. We come and look, sheet or temporarily point the worst of it, and price the full elevation once it has dried enough to see what is sound. Around Boldre it is nearly always a stack, or a west facing gable on a house standing in the open with nothing between it and the weather. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
When we tell people their wall does not need repointing
Three things get mistaken for failed pointing on modern brickwork here, and none of them is a repointing job. Green or black staining on a north elevation is algae, and it washes. A slightly open arris on the weather side of an eighties wall is the mortar doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to weather in preference to the brick. And the fine straight vertical line that appears every few metres down a long modern elevation is a movement joint. It is meant to be there, it is filled with a flexible sealant rather than mortar, and pointing it up in mortar is the wrong repair: the wall will simply crack somewhere less convenient the following summer.
What we do instead is price the parts that are genuinely due and mark the rest as leave alone, both on the same written quote, so you can see the reasoning rather than take our word for it. There is a cost to getting this wrong in the other direction as well. Point a sound modern wall in a mix stronger than the original, which is what happens when somebody quotes an area rate and works fast, and you have turned a wall that was shedding water properly into one that traps it, and the brick faces start to go instead of the joints. The test on a modern wall is simple enough and you can do it yourself: scrape a joint with a key. If you get dust and the key goes in more than a few millimetres, that elevation is worth pricing. If the key skids off, it is not.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Boldre, Pilley, South Baddesley, East Boldre, Sway and into Lymington, broadly SO41, under the New Forest National Park Authority. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Boldre questions we get asked
How do we know whether the wall really needs repointing?
Scrape a joint with a door key. If it powders and the key sinks in more than a few millimetres, that elevation is worth pricing. If the key skids off the surface, the joint is sound however tired it looks. We do the same thing on the visit at two heights on every face, because a wall is rarely uniform.
There is a straight vertical line down our wall. Is that a pointing job?
Almost certainly not. Long modern elevations are built with movement joints every few metres, filled with a flexible sealant so the wall can expand and contract. They look like cracks and they are not. Filling one with mortar removes the only place the wall was allowed to move, and it will crack somewhere else instead.
Our house is from the eighties. Should the mortar be lime or cement?
Cement and sand, gauged to sit a little under the strength of the brick, and matched to the original sand rather than just the colour. Lime belongs on solid walls built before the cavity, and there are some of those around here, but putting a soft lime mix into a dense modern joint gives you something that washes out in a few winters.
Is it worth pointing one elevation, or does a patch always show?
One elevation is normal and it does not show, because the change happens at a corner where the eye expects one. A patch in the middle of a face is the one that shows, and that is a matter of matching rather than of size. Where a patch is unavoidable we make a trial panel and let you look at it in daylight first.
Does being in the National Park change anything about repointing?
Only where the appearance of the building changes. Like for like repair is maintenance and needs nothing. If a wall is listed, the mortar is part of what is protected and consent comes first. The Authority's property map will tell you which category your address falls into, and we check it before we quote.
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Find out which elevations are actually due
Thomas comes out, tests the joints on every face, photographs them and sends a written itemised quote separating what needs doing from what we would leave. Free.