Repointing in Lilliput

Raking out comes first. Failed mortar is cut back to roughly twice the joint height, and further where it is still loose or crumbling. Soft brick and fine joints are raked by hand; hard cement joints on later Lilliput houses are opened carefully with a disc cutter, the blade kept off the brick arris, because a chipped arris cannot be put back.

The mortar. The rule is that mortar should be weaker than the brick, so that the joint takes the wear and the brick does not. On a solid wall built before about 1919, and on soft brick, that means a lime mortar, usually NHL, which lets moisture out through the joints. On a modern cavity wall in hard fired brick, a cement gauged mix is fine. The wrong mix traps water in the brick, and frost then spalls the face off.

The joint finish. Flush, weather struck, bucket handle or recessed: we match the profile already on the building, because it changes how the wall looks and how it sheds water. A recessed joint looks sharp but holds water on a wall facing the weather.

Matching the colour. We make up trial mixes with different sands, let them dry, and put a small sample panel on the wall for you to approve. New mortar is always a little brighter at first and weathers down.

The work itself. We damp down the joints before filling, pack the mortar in layers, finish the joint when it has stiffened, and brush it back. Mortar should not go on in frost or in a drying wind, so we protect fresh work.

Garden and retaining walls on the slope. Many Lilliput gardens step down towards the harbour, and a brick wall holding up the level above takes water through it from behind as well as rain on its face. Its joints wash out from the back, and the weep holes near the bottom block up. We clear the weep holes before pointing, rake out and repoint in a mix that suits the brick, and if the wall has started to lean, tell you that is a rebuild for our bricklaying page, not a repoint.

When to leave it. If only the elevation facing the harbour has washed out, that is the one to repoint. Sound joints on a sheltered wall stay as they are.

No rate per square metre, because the square metres tell you almost nothing until somebody has looked at what the joints are actually like.

Getting to it. A single storey garden wall can be done from the ground, while the gable of a tall Lilliput house on a slope above the harbour needs scaffold, and on Sandbanks Road the pavement stays open while we work. A chimney or a gable wants a scaffold, a boundary wall wants nothing at all. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line rather than something absorbed into a rate.

The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick it is the only safe way, because a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off either side. 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: cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first hard frost. Lime is slower to work and slower to cure, and it is the right answer on most pre-1919 walls in Lilliput.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are being raked and whether by hand or by disc, what the mortar mix is and whether it has been matched to what is there, how many spalled bricks are being cut out and replaced, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Close figures can still buy very different walls.

We cover Lilliput and all of BH14, along Sandbanks Road and Lilliput Road to Evening Hill and Salterns, and on to Whitecliff, Canford Cliffs and Penn Hill. BCP Council is the planning and building control authority, and our base in Boscombe is about five miles away.

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. Before you book a visit in Lilliput, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Lilliput 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.