East Boldre repointing, done in the right weather

The elevation that takes the weather. On an open plot one face does nearly all the ageing and is normally years ahead of the rest of the building. That is where the joints have washed back furthest and where the survey starts. We rake by hand with a plugging chisel to roughly twice the width of the joint, back to sound mortar, then point in lifts and brush back. The profile goes back as the wall carries it: flush or slightly recessed on pre-1919 brickwork, weather struck or bucket handle on the later houses. No disc cutter goes near soft brick, because an angle grinder widens the joint and takes the arris off for good.

The mix, and why it stays soft. Most of the older brickwork here is solid wall with no cavity, bedded in lime, built to let water evaporate back out through the joint. We match a sample of sound original for sand colour and grain and put back a natural hydraulic lime gauged a shade softer than the brick, so the mortar wears rather than the face. A trial panel goes up and dries before you approve it. Later cavity work in a gauged cement mortar gets matched too, because a lime joint in a modern wall is soft for no reason.

Protecting it while it takes up. This is the part that changes out here. Fresh lime has to hold its water long enough to carbonate, and on an exposed elevation a drying wind pulls that out faster than sun does. So we damp down before filling, sheet the work or hang damp hessian over it, and check it the next day. On a windy plot that protection is its own line in the quote.

Cement that should not be there. A solid wall has to stay breathable. Where somebody has pointed one in sand and cement, moisture that used to leave through the joint leaves through the brick face and a frost lifts the surface off. The wall reads oddly: crisp proud pointing, crumbling brick eaten back behind it, and once the joints have washed out you get penetrating damp inside. Cutting that out by hand is slow and the only repair that deals with the cause.

Spalled faces, plinths and stacks. A blown face will not recover, so the brick comes out whole and a reclaimed match goes in rather than a hollow filled with mortar. Where cob stands on a brick plinth we point the plinth in lime and keep it open, so the base carries on drying. Stacks take weather on all four sides with nothing warming them, so the joints go friable and the flaunching cracks well before the house walls do, and that comes off a scaffold.

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 cottage tight against the lane, an outbuilding at the end of a track and a stack on a main ridge are three different problems before a joint is opened. 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.

Lime mortar does not go off the way cement does. It stiffens, then hardens slowly over weeks and months by taking carbon dioxide back out of the air, and it can only do that while there is still moisture in the joint. Dry it out too early and the reaction stops. What you are left with looks like pointing and brushes out like sand a couple of winters later, and the verdict is that lime does not work, when it was never allowed to.

On a sheltered town street that is rarely a problem. On a plot open to the Forest it is the main one. A steady wind takes the water out of a fresh joint far faster than sunshine does, and an exposed elevation can be losing it on a grey day when nothing feels like drying weather. A frost inside the first few days is worse, because water freezing in a green joint breaks it up from the inside. Both are avoidable, and neither is avoided by working faster.

So the calendar and the sheeting are part of the specification here. We work the exposed elevations in spring and early autumn where we can, and the new pointing is damped, sheeted and checked. So when you compare quotes for a wall out this way, ask what happens to the new pointing after the trowel leaves it. If the answer is nothing, the price is lower for a reason.

We cover East Boldre, Beaulieu, Boldre, Brockenhurst and Lymington, the SO42 lanes generally, with the New Forest National Park Authority for planning and New Forest District Council for building control. 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.