Repointing in Hyde, starting at the foot of the wall

The first thing people describe is rarely the joint: a dark band along the bottom of an outside wall that climbs a little further every wet winter, brick faces flaking off in the courses just above the ground, or salty white powder inside a wall that used to be dry. Now and again it is a chimney dropping grit, the same problem at the other end of the building.

Almost all of that is mortar. We look at the whole building rather than the patch you have noticed, run a key along the joints, tap the courses for the hollow note that means the pointing has parted from the brick, and look at what the ground is doing outside. The survey is written up elevation by elevation, itemised, with the bands we would do now separated from the ones that can wait. The visit and the quote are free.

The bottom three or four courses. Ground that drains slowly holds water against the foot of a wall for days after heavy rain, and rain bouncing off a path throws more back into the same band. Those joints stay saturated, salts crystallise in them and in the brick, and the frost finishes the job. We rake that band out to depth, replace the bricks whose faces have blown, and point it back in a mix more permeable than the brick so the wall can dry outwards.

Raking out. Joints come back twice their width, deeper wherever the mortar behind is friable, and by hand. An angle grinder widens the joint, wanders off the line and takes the arris off the brick, and on soft old brick that damage is permanent. Joints are brushed out and damped down before filling, and struck once the mix has taken up.

Lime on solid walls. The older buildings here have no cavity behind the brick. They are breathable walls that shed water by letting it evaporate back out through the joint, so the mortar has to stay softer and more open than the brick. Those get an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to match the sand in your own mortar, struck flush or slightly recessed to what the wall carries. Where a wall has been repointed in sand and cement, that hard mix is why the brick faces beside it spall, and taking it out is the repair.

Matching. Mortar colour comes mostly from its sand, so a match is found rather than mixed from a tin. We take a sample of the soundest original from a sheltered spot and put a trial panel up on a discreet part of the wall for you to judge in daylight.

Chimneys. A stack has weather on four sides and nothing warming it, so it goes friable early and the penetrating damp from an open joint arrives on a bedroom ceiling. Pointing it, cutting out frost damaged brick and renewing the flaunching need one platform and one visit.

Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting. The quote is itemised: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open overnight, the site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. Anything nobody could have foreseen gets a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Repointing like for like is repair rather than development, so there is no planning application and nothing for building control to sign off. Appearance is controlled here, and by a different authority to most of our patch: Hyde sits inside the New Forest National Park, its own planning authority, and inside the Western Escarpment conservation area. Twenty one entries in the area are listed, and on a listed building the mortar is protected fabric, so a change of mix, colour or joint profile needs listed building consent. National Park heritage and conservation guidance sets out how that works, and we check an address before anything is agreed.

Ring rather than use the form. A wall with the joints washed out lets driven rain through to the inside face, and on a chimney it finds the flashings too. We come and look, sheet or temporarily point the worst of it, and price the elevation once it has dried enough to see what is sound. Out here the joints that let go first are nearest the ground, so if damp is showing on an inside wall at skirting height say so when you ring and we will look at the outside ground levels on the same visit. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

Hyde is not in a river flood zone and Huckles Brook is far enough off not to be the issue. What affects brickwork here is surface water. The ground here sheds slowly, so after a heavy spell water stands and moves across the surface instead of soaking away, and where it reaches the foot of a wall it stays. A joint wet for weeks never carbonates properly if it is new and never dries if it is old, which is why the bottom band of a wall out here fails a generation before the rest.

Two decisions follow. One is the mix at the base: soft, permeable and able to give water up, never a strong joint and never a cement fillet where the wall meets the ground. The other is the ground itself. If a path, a drive or raised borders have brought the level up over the damp proof course, no mortar solves that, and the channel is better dug back down before the pointing than after. You can check what the ground does at your address on the government flood risk service, and we will look at the levels on the free visit either way.

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