Broadstone repointing, from the stack down
The chimney is usually where the open joints are. We survey the stack and every wall, then price the access separately so you can see it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Look at the chimney before you look at the walls. On most Broadstone properties the stack is the oldest, coldest and most weathered masonry on the building, and its joints open years before anything at ground level needs touching.
That is the pattern here, week after week. Somebody rings about a damp patch on a ceiling, or grit collecting in the gutter, or a dark stain spreading down a chimney breast in a back bedroom. The walls turn out to be perfectly serviceable. The mortar that has failed is thirty feet up.
So the free site visit covers the whole building. We look at the stack with binoculars and then properly, test joints at low level with a key, tap along courses for the hollow note that means the pointing has parted from the brick, and photograph every face. You get a written itemised quote, elevation by elevation, with the stack priced separately, because that is where the access money goes.
The work
Stacks, long low walls and the odd blown face
Work down the building, not up it.
Thirty feet up. A stack takes weather on four sides, has a cold flue up the middle and nothing heating it from inside, so its mortar goes friable and washes out while the house walls are still fine. Open joints let water into the stack, down into the roof space, and out as penetrating damp on a bedroom ceiling. We rake it out, repoint in a mix matched to the brickwork, cut out the frost damaged bricks and renew the flaunching around the pots. That is work at height, so it wants a scaffold rather than a tower, and the platform is the honest bulk of the cost. Do everything up there in one visit.
At eye level, and a long way along. Over four in ten homes in Broadstone are bungalows, and a bungalow gives you a lot of wall spread thin: a house worth of floor area in one storey, nearly all of it inside reach of a tower or trestles. That takes the biggest single line out of a wall quote. It also puts the finished joint at eye level along the whole elevation, so the colour match and the profile have to be right, struck to whatever the wall already carries, usually bucket handle or weather struck on this stock.
What is behind those joints. Nearly two thirds of the housing here went up between 1945 and 1982, busiest in the late fifties and early sixties. Mortar of that period was often gauged with lime as well as cement, so it is more forgiving than later mixes and it fails gently: the joint erodes at the arris, water stands in it, frost takes the surface off in flakes. Matching means matching the sand and the gauge, not just the colour, and you see a trial panel in daylight before we carry on. Joints come out to about twice their width, the perpends by hand, and the angle grinder stays in the van on anything soft. A small share of the village predates 1919 and is solid wall, which sheds water only by letting it evaporate back out through the joint: those get an NHL lime or lime putty matched to the original sand, and nothing ruins one faster than hard cement.
Where a face has blown. The brick is cut out and turned or replaced against a sample held on the wall. Fill the hollow with mortar and you get a patch that never matches and drops out in a couple of winters. Look under sills, beside downpipes, at bay corners, and just above the damp proof course where a drive has been laid against the house.
At ankle height. Porch brickwork, the piers either side of a garage opening and the low wall along the front of a plot have no shelter and often no coping worth the name. Rain gets into the top, freezes and pushes the wall apart from inside. Repointing the coping and the exposed face is quick work next to a rebuild.
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 rather than a single figure: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines.
Nothing is left open overnight, the site is swept at the end of each day, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up that nobody could have seen, you get 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. Broadstone has no conservation area of its own and four listed entries. On a listed building the mortar is protected fabric, so repointing needs listed building consent before a joint is opened, and the council keeps the list for the whole of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. We check an address before anybody starts.
Cost
What decides the price of a repointing job
No rate per square metre. The area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.
Getting to it. A detached bungalow with a stack on the ridge, a chalet house with a dormer gable and a low wall along the front of a plot need three different platforms, and only one of them needs a scaffold. The work at height rules are why access is its own priced line.
The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick it is the only safe way: a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off either side. 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 and whether it was matched to the original, 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.
If water is getting in
Open joints, and water coming through the wall
Ring rather than use the form. Washed out joints let 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 show what is sound. If the damp shows on an upstairs ceiling or around a chimney breast, say so, because that moves the stack to the front of the survey. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
On a bungalow the mortar bill is mostly the chimney
Bungalow country, by a wide margin, and that changes the shape of a repointing quote more than most people expect. On a two storey house the walls are the expensive part, because you cannot reach them without a scaffold. On a bungalow the walls are the cheap part, since a tower or a set of trestles will reach nearly all of them. The chimney becomes the expensive part, because it is the one place you cannot get to without a proper platform.
Plan around the access, then, rather than around the mortar. If the stack needs repointing and the roof also wants attention, or the gutters and fascia are due, get the lot looked at together and done off one scaffold. Split it into three visits and you pay for the platform three times, and the platform is the part of the price that does not get cheaper. It also means asking any quote you get to show the access as its own line, so you can see what you are paying for the mortar and what you are paying to stand next to it. We break it out that way as a matter of course.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Broadstone, Merley, Corfe Mullen, Canford Heath and across into Poole and Wimborne, broadly BH17 and BH18, 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.
Questions
Broadstone questions we get asked
Can our chimney be repointed without a full scaffold?
Not off a ladder. Repointing a stack means working with both hands for hours, which is exactly what a ladder is not for. A tower will sometimes reach a low stack on a single storey extension. For anything on a main ridge it is a scaffold, shown as its own line on the quote.
Is it cheaper to repoint a bungalow than a house?
For the walls, generally yes, because a single storey elevation can mostly be worked from a tower with no scaffold to hire and stand. The area of wall is often larger than people expect, so the mortar and labour are not necessarily less. The saving is almost entirely on access.
The pointing looks fine from the ground. Should we still get the stack checked?
Yes. You cannot judge a stack from the ground, and the failures that cost the most start there. Sand and grit in the gutter, or a stain appearing on the chimney breast inside, is the stack telling you. We look at it as part of the free visit.
What mortar goes back on a nineteen sixties wall?
A cement and sand mortar gauged to sit a little under the strength of the brick and matched to the original sand. Plenty of walls from that period had lime in the mix too, which is softer than a modern mortar, and matching that matters. Put a hard mix into a softer old joint and the joint outlives the brick, so the faces spall.
Will you sort out the gutters while you are up there?
If they need it, yes, and it makes sense while the access is standing. A downpipe running over onto brickwork is one of the commonest reasons a strip of wall loses its mortar, so the cause is worth dealing with at the same time.
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Get the stack and the walls surveyed together
Thomas comes out, photographs every elevation, tests the joints and sends a written itemised quote with the access shown as its own line. Free.