Repointing in Cadnam and Bartley, matched at eye level

Pre-1919 solid walls. Plenty of the housing here predates 1919: single skin solid walls of handmade brick bedded in lime, with no cavity behind them. A wall like that never stays bone dry and was never meant to.

Rain wets the face of an old Cadnam and Bartley wall, the moisture travels and leaves again through the joints, which is why the mortar was made weaker than the brick. We rake those out by hand to about twice the joint width and point back in a natural hydraulic lime with the sand matched to what came out. No disc cutter goes near them, because it widens the joint and takes the arris off a soft face for good.

Post-war cavity brickwork. Most of the rest of Cadnam and Bartley is later, the busiest years being the late sixties and early seventies: a brick outer skin with a cavity behind, laid in a cement and sand mortar and struck weather or bucket handle. They fail differently. The joint does not wash out so much as open at the arris on exposed corners and along the top course, and once water stands in it a frost lifts the face off the brick. On those walls a gauged mix matched for strength and sand is right, and lime would be soft for no reason.

Telling one from the other. Some of the Cadnam and Bartley stock is inter-war, the awkward middle: early cavity or solid, in a weak gauged mortar with lime in it, and a modern strong mix put back into one of those sheds brick faces within a few winters. We settle which wall we are in front of before anything is mixed.

Matching, and the trial panel. Colour in a mortar comes from the sand rather than the binder, so a sample of sound original is taken from a sheltered joint, broken down and matched for colour and grain. Then a trial panel goes up on your own wall in Cadnam and Bartley and is left to dry, because wet mortar reads darker than it finishes.

Spalled faces and stacks. Where a face has blown, pointing round it only frames the damage, so the brick is cut out whole and a match bedded in. On the older cottages in Cadnam and Bartley that means reclaimed stock, which takes longer to source than to lay. Stacks stand clear of everything and lose their joints and flaunching first, and that comes off a scaffold shown as its own line.

Repointing in Cadnam and Bartley is not priced per square metre; the joints decide it, not the size of the wall.

Which mortar the wall needs. The pre-1919 cottages in Cadnam and Bartley were built in soft brick and lime, and lime is right for them. It sets slowly, has to be protected from sun, rain and frost while it cures, and takes longer to lay. Pointing an old wall in hard cement traps water behind a mortar stronger than the brick, and a hard frost then takes the faces off. A seventies house in a cement and lime mortar is quicker to do.

How deep, and by what. Raking out by hand is slow but safe on soft brick. A disc is faster on hard cement joints, but in the wrong hands it widens the joint and chips the edges. The depth sets the hours more than the area.

Getting up there. A bungalow with low eaves comes off a tower. A chimney stack on the main ridge of a detached house needs scaffold. The rules for roofwork are why access is priced separately.

Spalled bricks. Faces already blown have to be cut out and replaced with a match.

Anyone else pricing it should be able to say how deep the joints are raked and with what, which mix is going in and whether it has been matched, and whether the scaffold is in.

Many homes in Cadnam and Bartley are bungalows and most of the rest are detached with low eaves on open plots, so a great deal of this brickwork is looked at from a metre away.

On a two storey terrace a mortar a shade off reads as nothing from the pavement, because you see the wall at an angle from thirty feet. On a single storey elevation you walk past the joint every day at eye level, and a mismatch is obvious for years.

That makes the sand the decisive part of the specification, not a detail. The binder gives the mortar its strength, but the colour and texture you see are the sand, so it is matched off a sample of the original and proved on a trial panel left to dry on your own wall. Judging it wet is how people end up with a stripe.

The other consequence is how much you do at once. A lot of the later brickwork here is machine made facing brick with very regular joints, and on that a patch of new pointing reads as a rectangle from the garden however good the match is. So on an exposed corner or a top course we take the pointing out to a natural break rather than stopping where the failure stops. It costs a little more on the day and saves you looking at the join.

We are 17.5 miles away in Boscombe and cover Cadnam, Bartley, Copythorne, Winsor, Ashurst and Netley Marsh, most of SO40. Inside the Park boundary any consent comes from the Park Authority, and outside it from New Forest District Council, which also handles building regulations. The firm's full name is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd.

It is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The man who scratches the joints and prices the job is Thomas Hannen, who owns it. A verified customer's review on Checkatrade gives us 10 out of 10. The visit is free and the written quote, set out line by line, is free as well. Before you book a visit in Cadnam and Bartley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Cadnam and Bartley 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.