Repointing and mortar matching in Downton

Soft red brick on The Borough and the lanes off it. A quarter of Downton predates 1919 and the largest slice of that is older still: soft handmade brick frontages, a fair amount panelled with flint, nearly all solid wall with nothing behind the outer face. Joints come out by hand with a hacking iron and a plugging chisel, back to about twice their width, because a disc cutter that wanders takes the arris off a soft brick for good. The wall is damped down, filled in lifts, brushed back and struck to the profile it already carries. The mortar is a natural hydraulic lime kept weaker than the brick, so the joint wears out before the face does.

Flint panels and gauged arches. A good deal of the older village is flint panelled between brick lacing courses, with brick quoins at the corners and a gauged arch turned over each window. Those three want three approaches in one elevation. Flint is bedded rather than coursed, so the joints are irregular and cannot be raked to a set depth without loosening stones. The lacing courses and quoins rake normally. A gauged arch is different again: its joints are a couple of millimetres wide and want a fine lime putty. We point each with the material it takes rather than running one mix across the face.

Taking a hard repoint out. Nearly every older wall in the village has been pointed at least once in sand and cement. It is why so many frontages have joints that look sound standing in front of hollow, flaking brick. The cement has to come out without widening the joint, and blown faces are cut out and replaced with reclaimed brick, matched against a sample and a trial panel.

Post-war cavity skins. Getting on for half the village went up after the war and is a different animal: a fired brick outer skin in a gauged cement and sand mortar, struck weather or bucket handle. Those joints pit and open at the arris rather than washing out, and the right repair is a matched cement mix rather than lime. Put a strong modern mix into the old wall on the next street and it takes the brick faces off within a few winters. Half a mile apart, and they want opposite things.

Stacks, parapets and copings. On the older cottages the stack carries the oldest mortar and takes weather from every side, so it goes first: cracked flaunching, loose pots, joints you can see daylight through. Repointing above the flashing and renewing the flaunching is usually enough. Brick on edge copings do the same job for the wall below, and once the bedding under a coping has gone the whole length starts drawing water.

No rate per square metre: the area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at what the joints are like.

Getting to it. A frontage on The Borough straight on the pavement, a cottage set back down a lane and a post-war semi with a gable you can reach off a tower are three different set ups before a chisel comes out. The work at height rules are why the scaffold is a priced line, not something absorbed into a rate.

The joints decide it, not the wall. How deep the joints have to 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, and one hard frost takes the face off soft brick. Lime is right on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it has been matched, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

On most of our patch you agree the mortar with the builder on the day. Here you often cannot. With the village inside a conservation area and more than a hundred listed entries in it, a large share of the older frontages are addresses where the mortar itself is protected fabric. There, repointing needs consent in advance, and an application is not satisfied by the word mortar. It wants the binder named, the sand described, the proportions given, the joint profile stated and usually a trial panel on the building.

That changes the order you do things in. Survey and sample first, specification written, submitted, and the work booked for after the decision. It also changes what a quote should look like. Ask anyone pricing your wall to write the binder, the sand and the profile into the document, because a quote saying only that the wall will be repointed cannot go in front of a conservation officer. We write it that way as standard, and the permissions you may need is a sensible read before you commit to a start date.

We cover Downton, Charlton All Saints, Redlynch and the SP5 villages down the Avon valley, under Wiltshire Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. 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.