Longham repointing and mortar repair

Repointing, done at the right depth. Joints come out to roughly twice their own width, around twenty millimetres on most Longham brickwork, and the back of the joint is cleaned rather than left as a shelf of old mortar.

Where the brick is hard and modern a small disc can be used with care on the bed joints, but the perpends come out by hand, and on anything soft the angle grinder stays in the van. Joints are damped down before filling, packed in layers rather than buttered over, and brushed back once the mix has taken up.

The mix, matched to the wall it is going into. Six homes in ten in Longham date from between 1945 and 1982: cavity work in a cement and sand mortar, wanting a gauge chosen to sit just under the strength of the brick. The older cottages are a different animal, solid wall with soft brick, and they want an NHL lime or a lime putty mix so the wall stays breathable. Getting that the wrong way round is the most expensive mistake on this trade. We take a sample of sound original mortar from a sheltered spot, match the sand for colour and texture, and put up a trial panel to look at in daylight first.

Spalled and frost damaged faces. Where a face has blown, filling the hollow with mortar is a patch that shows and then falls out. We cut the brick out and turn or replace it with a match. Frost damage clusters below sills, behind downpipes, at bay corners, and just above the damp proof course where a path or drive has been laid against the house.

Chimneys, and the joints that let water into the roof. A Longham stack is exposed on all four sides and gets no warmth from the house below, so its mortar goes friable and washes out years ahead of the walls. Open joints send penetrating damp down into the roof space and out onto a ceiling, and past the flashings as well. Repointing a stack and renewing the flaunching is a proper access job, and needs a scaffold rather than a tower.

Boundary walls and outbuildings. Longham plots tend to be generous, and with them come front walls, dividing walls and outbuilding walls, all taking weather on both faces with nothing to shelter them. Coping joints are the usual failure: rain gets into the top, freezes, and pushes the brickwork apart from inside. Repointing the coping and the exposed face puts off a rebuild for a long time.

Area is the least useful number in a repointing quote. The joints set the hours. How deep, and how. Joints need raking back well beyond the surface. On hard brick with cement pointing, a careful disc cut is fine. On soft older brick, raking out by hand is the only safe way, because a disc widens the joint and chips the arris, and it is much slower.

The mortar. A newer house takes a cement and sharp sand mix of the right strength, never stronger than the brick. The few older Longham cottages want lime, which cures slowly, cannot go on in frost and costs more in time. A mix that is too strong traps water and makes the brick face blow off.

Where the work is. A garden wall worked from the ground is one thing. A chimney stack on a bungalow needs a roof scaffold, and a two storey gable a full one. The work at height rules are why access is its own line.

Spalled bricks. Each one cut out and replaced is counted and priced.

Put these to any other quote: how deep are the joints raked, and with what tool? What exactly is the mix? How many bricks are being replaced, and is the scaffold in?

Six out of ten homes in Longham went up between the end of the war and the early eighties, busiest by some way in the late sixties and early seventies.

Whole roads were laid out, built and pointed within a season or two of one another, by the same firms, out of the same brick, using the same mortar gauge. That is why the pointing on a Longham street reaches the end of its life all at once rather than house by house.

In practice, if a neighbour with the same house type and orientation has open joints on their gable, yours are probably at the same stage even if they look acceptable from the pavement, so have them checked before a face spalls. Shared and boundary walls are also best done once, together: a dividing wall between two drives is one wall with two owners, and pointing one side while the other stays open just means water keeps getting into the middle. We will survey and quote both properties on the same visit.

We work from Boscombe, 4.7 miles from Longham, and cover the village along with Dudsbury, Hampreston, West Parley, Ferndown and Wimborne. Dorset Council is the planning and building control authority for all of it. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. Before you book a visit in Longham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen owns it, and he is the one who rakes a test joint and writes your price. A verified customer on Checkatrade gave us 10 out of 10. Coming out costs you nothing, and the itemised written quote is also free.

Most repairs in Longham 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.