Fordingbridge repointing and lime mortar work

Soft red brick in lime, in the older streets. Solid wall, no cavity, and the wall keeps water out by soaking it up and letting it evaporate back out through the joint. It has to stay breathable, so the mortar has to be softer and more open than the brick beside it.

Joints come out by hand to about twice their width, with the angle grinder left in the van, and go back in an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to the original sand for colour and grain. They are damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up. On a period frontage the profile is usually flush or slightly recessed rather than the weather struck or bucket handle joint you find on later work, and we copy whatever survives somewhere sheltered on the building.

Cement pointing on those same walls. A great deal of the old Fordingbridge stock was repointed in sand and cement between the sixties and the nineties, and undoing it is slow work that has to be done by hand. A hard joint on a soft brick will not let the wall dry through the mortar, so the water leaves through the brick faces instead and frost takes them off. Joints standing proud and hard with hollowed bricks between them is the tell. It comes out by hand, joint by joint, and it is priced as its own line because it is slower than a wall nobody has touched.

Later cavity brickwork, which is most of Fordingbridge. Better than four homes in ten here were built between 1945 and 1982, with the busiest years in the seventies and early eighties. That is a single outer skin of fired brick in a cement and sand mortar. It erodes at the arris rather than washing out, water starts to stand in the open joint, and a hard frost lifts the face off. Matching it means matching the sand and the gauge as well as the colour, and a trial panel goes up somewhere discreet for you to judge in daylight.

Faces that have blown, cut out and never filled. Where the face of a brick has gone we cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it against a sample held on the wall. A mortar patch in the hollow never matches and drops out inside a couple of winters. Frost damage gathers under sills, beside downpipes and in the courses just above the damp proof course where a drive or a path has been laid up against the house.

The ground floor courses on walls near the water. Fordingbridge walls close to the Avon and its meadows sit in damper ground and stay wet longer after rain, and it is the bottom band that shows it: loose, crumbling joints in the lowest courses with the wall above sound. Those get the most permeable mix on the building, kept softer than what is above them, because on a wall with no damp proof course that band is sacrificial and meant to be renewed rather than sealed.

Stacks and parapets. A Fordingbridge chimney has weather on four sides and nothing warming it from inside, so its joints go friable years ahead of the walls and the penetrating damp that follows lands on a top floor ceiling. We repoint the stack, cut out the frost damaged bricks and renew the flaunching round the pots in one visit. It is work at height and wants a scaffold, not a tower, and the platform is the honest bulk of that cost, which is why doing it all at once is worth more than it sounds.

We never quote repointing per square metre, because a wall's size means little until the joints have been checked. Lime or cement. The older houses near the centre are soft brick in lime and need lime again, which is slower to lay and has to be kept damp and protected while it cures. The estate houses are hard brick in cement, and a matching sand and cement repoint on those goes quicker.

Old mistakes. Too strong a mix is the classic one. Many old walls have been patched in hard cement, which keeps water in a soft brick until frost pops the face off. That cement has to be cut out with care before lime goes back.

Depth and damage. Raking joints back to a proper depth by hand takes time, and spalled bricks to cut out and replace add more.

Getting to it. A three storey front on the High Street, a riverside cottage with a garden and a single gable on an estate are three different set ups, from a tower to a full platform, and the work at height rules mean the scaffold is priced on its own.

So ask every firm quoting: what depth will the joints be raked to, what mortar is going back and why that one, and is the scaffold in the figure?

Fordingbridge sits 14.1 miles north of our base in Boscombe. We repoint across the town, from the older streets near the bridge to the estates, and out to Sandleheath, Alderholt, Godshill, Hyde and Breamore, and New Forest District Council decides any listed building consent in the town.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and Companies House will show you the record. Thomas Hannen owns the business and comes out to look at the joints and price the work in person. A verified customer on Checkatrade marked us 10 out of 10. The site visit is free, as is the written quote, itemised line by line. Before you book a visit in Fordingbridge, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Fordingbridge 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.