East Boldre repointing, done in the right weather

The elevation that takes the weather. On an open East Boldre 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.

On an East Boldre wall 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 in East Boldre 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 in East Boldre. 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 in East Boldre 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.

Measuring an East Boldre wall is easy. It tells you almost nothing until the joints have been looked at. How deep. The depth each joint has to be raked back, and whether the faces have already spalled, drive the hours much more than the area.

Which side. The elevation facing the open forest takes the weather and usually needs deeper raking than the sheltered side, so each elevation is priced on its own.

Mortar. Lime is right on older soft brick. A mix that is too strong is the commonest error: after one hard frost the face comes off the brick rather than the joint. Sand and colour are matched on a small trial first.

Replacement bricks. Spalled bricks are cut out and replaced with a reclaimed match, and each one is counted on the quote.

Height and position. A cottage hard against the lane, an outbuilding down a track and a stack on the ridge are three different problems. The work at height rules are why the scaffold is itemised and not hidden in a rate.

Get the same answers from every repointer: rake depth, by hand or by disc, the mix and how it was matched, and whether scaffolding is in their figure.

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 an East Boldre 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 in East Boldre. 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.

East Boldre, Beaulieu, Boldre, Brockenhurst and Lymington, and the SO42 lanes between them, are all within reach of our base in Boscombe. The Park Authority is the planning authority, and building control is New Forest District Council.

Your contract is with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns the business, and he is the one who scrapes out a few joints and works out the price. A verified customer gave the firm 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. No charge applies to the visit or to the itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in East Boldre, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in East Boldre 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.