Repointing Victorian brickwork in Lyndhurst

Solid Victorian and Edwardian walls. No cavity behind the face, so the wall gets rid of water by letting it evaporate out of the joint, and the mortar has to stay softer and more open than the brick for that to happen.

On a Lyndhurst wall we rake out by hand to a depth of about twice the joint width, perpends as well as beds, damp the joints down, and point back in an NHL lime or a lime putty gauged against a sample of the original, with the sand chosen for grain and colour. Where an original weather struck finish survives we put that back and do not default to a bucket handle profile because it is faster to strike.

Bands, string courses and gauged arches. A lot of the brickwork in Lyndhurst carries detail: coloured banding through an elevation, corbelling under the eaves, rubbed and gauged arches over the windows set in joints only a couple of millimetres thick. That work was bedded in a fine, fat lime with almost no coarse sand in it, which is the only way a joint that thin is possible. It gets its own mix and its own joint width, and it is pointed after the field wall, never in the same pass.

Cement pointing on soft brick. Where a Lyndhurst wall was repointed in sand and cement some decades ago, the water that used to leave through the joint leaves through the face instead, so the joints look sound while the bricks are spalling. Cutting that back out is slow hand work with a chisel and a hacksaw blade, and a disc cutter or an angle grinder never goes near it: the cut widens the joint permanently and takes the arris off the brick either side.

Faces that have gone, and the reason they went. Blown faces come out whole and matched bricks go in, judged against a sample held on the wall and a trial panel you look at dry. They go worst low down on the weather side and where ground has been built up over the damp proof course, and pointing over that only buys a couple of winters, so we say where the cause is levels or a broken gully rather than mortar.

Tall and shared stacks. Stacks in Lyndhurst are tall, frequently shared between two houses, and exposed on every side with a cold flue up the middle, so their joints go friable long before the walls do. Repointing above the roof line, rebedding pots and renewing cracked flaunching is regular work, and where the stack is shared the neighbour needs to be in the conversation before a platform is booked.

Boundary walls to the road. Lyndhurst brick walls with piers and a coping, wet from both faces with no roof over them. The coping is what saves one, so it gets rebedded and the top courses pointed before anybody touches the face of the wall.

We never price by the square metre, because the area says little until someone has looked closely at the joints. Getting the old out. Soft lime mortar rakes out fairly quickly. Hard cement from an old repair has to be cut out with great care, or it takes the brick edges with it, and that is slow.

The right mix. On most pre-1919 walls in Lyndhurst, lime is the answer. It is slower to mix and lay, and it needs looking after while it cures, but it lets the wall dry out. Cement on soft brick traps water, and the faces spall away in frost.

How much has spalled. Every brick that has lost its face has to be cut out and replaced or turned, and matching old brick can mean hunting down reclaimed stock.

Getting to it. A frontage on the pavement in the middle of Lyndhurst, a rear return behind a garden and a stack shared by two houses three storeys up are different set ups. A chimney or gable needs scaffold; a garden wall does not. The work at height rules make that its own line.

Ask anyone else how deep they rake and with what, whether the lime mix has been matched to yours, and whether the scaffold is included.

Lyndhurst is 14.9 miles from where we are based in Boscombe. Repointing work takes us round the village, Emery Down, Bank, Minstead, Brockenhurst and the other SO43 villages, where the New Forest National Park Authority is the planning body.

You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen, whose business it is, looks at the wall and prices every repointing job himself. A verified Checkatrade customer rated us 10 out of 10. There is nothing to pay for the visit or for the itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Lyndhurst, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Lyndhurst 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.