Repointing and mortar repairs in Bournemouth

Age decides the method here.

The oldest streets, the Victorian and Edwardian villas and the terraces behind them, are pre-1919: solid wall, no cavity, built to handle rain by letting it evaporate back out through the joint. That only holds while the mortar stays softer and more permeable than the brick. Those joints are raked by hand to roughly twice their width, never with an angle grinder, and filled with an NHL lime or a lime putty mix gauged to the original for sand, colour and texture. The profile goes back to what the wall already carries, usually flush or a shade recessed on a period frontage.

Winton and Moordown are a different problem. A fifth of that housing went up between the wars and another two fifths after it, all of it cavity work: one skin of fired brick in a cement and sand mortar, struck weather or bucket handle. Those joints do not wash out. They pit and open at the arris, water stands in them, and a hard frost lifts the face off the brick. Where a wall has already been repointed in a mix stronger than the brick, the joints look sound and the faces spall. That is the wall people misread most often.

Blown faces are cut out whole and turned or replaced, never filled. Mortar in a hollow does not match and does not last. A match means a sample off the wall and a trial panel you look at first, because a new brick weathering in beside a ninety year old one is the part that shows from the street.

Then there is everything above the eaves. Half the homes in this part of town are flats, many in converted houses that still carry a big shared stack. Weather on four sides, a cold flue up the middle, nothing warming it from inside: a stack goes friable years before the walls do, and the penetrating damp that follows lands on a top floor ceiling. Repointing it, renewing the flaunching and making good the parapet joints all want a scaffold rather than a tower. Where the wall belongs to a block, the freeholder instructs the work and leaseholders are usually consulted under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.

One thing we will not do is point over movement. Horizontal cracking every fifth or sixth course is corroding wall ties, not tired mortar, and filling those joints hides it for a season. We say so on the visit.

No rate per square metre. The area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.

Getting to it. A three storey converted villa in Charminster with a shared stack, a thirties semi off Wimborne Road with one gable taking the weather, and a low front wall onto the pavement are three different set ups before a joint is raked. How long a platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules are why access is its own priced line.

The joints decide it, not the wall. Hand raking is slow, and on soft brick it is the only safe way: a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off. Depth, 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 right on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by what, what the mix is, how many spalled bricks come out, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

Under two miles of streets separate these walls from open water. On a blowing day the sea does not arrive as clean rain. It arrives as spray, and it leaves salt in the outer few millimetres of every joint on the weather side.

Salt then does two things. It holds damp between showers, so an elevation that ought to dry out over a fine afternoon stays wet. And when it does finally dry, it crystallises inside the joint and inside the pores of the brick, and that growth breaks the material apart from within. Hence the pattern all over town: the seaward face tired, the sheltered side almost new.

So what changes is the mix, not the timing. The instinct on a weathered wall is to point it hard, because hard sounds like it lasts. On a salty elevation hard is the worst answer available. A dense cement joint stops the wall breathing, so the moisture and the salt leave through the brick face instead and take the face with them. We point the exposed elevation a shade softer than the brick, matched on sample, and damp the joints down and brush them out before filling so the mix cures rather than flashing off. Ask anyone quoting you what mix they intend on the seaward face specifically, and be wary if it is the same one they are using round the back.

We cover Charminster, Winton, Moordown, Springbourne, Boscombe and the streets in between, broadly BH1 to BH11, all of it under Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council. 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 prices every job himself, and he is the one who comes out. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written itemised quote are free.