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. 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 rather than default to a bucket handle profile because it is faster to strike.

Bands, string courses and gauged arches. A lot of the brickwork here 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 rather than in the same pass.

Cement pointing on soft brick. Where a 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 here 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. 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.

No rate per square metre. The area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.

Getting to it. A frontage straight onto the pavement in the middle of the village, a rear return behind a garden and a stack shared between two houses three storeys up are three different set ups. A chimney or a gable wants a scaffold; a boundary wall wants nothing. The work at height rules are why access is a priced line rather than something absorbed into a rate.

The joints decide it, not the wall. How deep they come back, and whether the faces have spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does.

Matching is the part that shows. Lime is slower to work and slower to cure, and right on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it was matched, how many spalled bricks are being replaced, and whether the scaffold is in the price.

We cover Lyndhurst, Emery Down, Bank, Minstead, Brockenhurst and the SO43 villages, with the New Forest National Park Authority as the planning authority. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen's business, and he prices every job himself rather than sending a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are free.