Repointing Christchurch brickwork

The old town is pointed in lime. A fifth of the housing in Christchurch is pre-1919, concentrated in the streets between the Priory and the bridges. That is solid wall: soft handmade brick, no cavity, and a lime mortar always meant to be the sacrificial part.

We rake those joints out by hand to about twice the width of the joint and put back an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged and matched to the original. A disc cutter has no business on that brick: it widens the joint and takes the arris off either side. Joints are damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up. The profile goes back as found, usually flush or slightly recessed on a period frontage.

Terraces, parapets and shared stacks. A quarter of the homes in Christchurch are terraced, and on a terrace the mortar that fails first is nearly always high up: the parapet, the chimney, and the joints either side of a shared valley. Those are cold and wet on every side, so the mortar goes friable years before the rest of the wall, and nobody looks until penetrating damp shows on a bedroom ceiling. Access is the honest cost, and above the eaves it is a scaffold rather than a tower. Where the stack or parapet is shared, we sort out who owns what before anything is raked.

Cement pointing on a wall that cannot take it. A great deal of old Christchurch was repointed in sand and cement between the sixties and the eighties, and it is now doing damage. A hard joint stops the wall breathing, so moisture leaves through the brick instead and the faces blow off in the first sharp frost. Sound joints and crumbling bricks is the tell. Taking a hard mortar out of a soft wall is slow, careful hand work, and it is the only repair that stops it.

Blown faces and replacement bricks. Where a face has gone we cut the brick out and replace or turn it rather than filling the hollow. A match on a Christchurch frontage means reclaimed or handmade stock, a sample held against the wall and a trial panel you approve first, judged on how it will look after a couple of years of weathering. The newer estates towards Somerford and Jumpers are a different problem: modern brick in a strong mix does not wash out, but exposed gables pit at the joint and the odd face lifts, which is patch repointing rather than a whole elevation. Two kilometres from the water, the seaward side of anything here is the tired face.

Repointing is not priced by the metre, because a wall's size says little until someone has looked at the joints.

The set-up. A Georgian frontage straight onto the pavement in Christchurch old town, a terrace with a shared parapet off Purewell, and a detached eighties house at Somerford with one exposed gable need very different access, and the HSE rules on working on roofs are why access has its own figure.

Getting the old mortar out. Soft brick has to be raked by hand; an angle grinder widens the joint and chips the arris away. How deep the joints go, and how many faces have already spalled, drives the hours.

The mix. The common mistake is a mix that is too strong. Cement traps water against soft brick, and a hard frost then pushes the face off. A pre-1919 wall wants a lime mortar, which sets slowly and must be protected from sun, rain and frost while it cures, and that adds time.

Salt near the sea. Salts in the brick come out as the wall dries, and a mortar that cannot let moisture move pushes that damage into the brick instead.

Ask of any other quote: how deep and by what, what mix and has it been matched, and how many spalled bricks are coming out?

The centre sits inside the Christchurch Central conservation area, and what is protected there is appearance. That matters more than it sounds when the job is repointing, because on a historic frontage the mortar is a bigger part of what you see than the brick.

Joint width, joint profile and the colour of the sand give a street its character, and swapping a flush lime joint for a struck cement one changes the whole elevation even though not a single brick has moved.

Like for like repair is maintenance and needs nothing from anybody. Changing the appearance is where you ask first, and the council keeps the list of what falls inside the boundary. So, for an address in the centre: photograph the wall before anyone touches it, agree the profile and the sand in writing, and have a trial panel put up and looked at in daylight. If a quote does not name the mix and the finish, it is not a quote for work in a conservation area, and a wide grey band of modern mortar across a Castle Street frontage is very hard to undo.

We work across the old town and the Quay, Purewell, Stanpit, Somerford, Jumpers, Burton and out to Mudeford, broadly BH23. Christchurch is 2.7 miles from our Boscombe base, and listed building consent here comes from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council.

Behind the quote is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 15471719, and its owner Thomas Hannen prices each repointing job after looking at the joints with you. A verified customer on Checkatrade scored us 10 out of 10. The visit costs nothing, and the itemised written quote is free as well. Before you book a visit in Christchurch, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Christchurch 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.