Mortar and repointing in Lytchett Matravers
Two ages of brickwork share these lanes and they want two different mixes. We survey every elevation before we price a joint.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Your joints are due when they have weathered back behind the brick, crumble under a key, or sound hollow along a course, but what matters more is what somebody last put in them. Lytchett Matravers has soft old solid brick cottages and long runs of seventies and eighties cavity work a few hundred yards apart, so the job is identifying the wall, then raking out and pointing in the mix that suits it. Bricks cracked right through need rebuilding.
Tired pointing in Lytchett Matravers is usually visible well before it fails. Joints on a front elevation open far enough to see from the lane. Brick faces flaking under a sill or beside a downpipe. Sand and grit in the gutter under a chimney. A damp patch inside that only shows after a wet spell from the south west.
None of those is a rebuild. All are mortar, and most are one elevation, not a whole house. Thomas walks all four sides of a Lytchett Matravers house, scrapes joints with a key to find how far back the decay goes, taps along a course for the hollow note that means the pointing has parted from the brick, and photographs every face. You get it back in writing, itemised elevation by elevation, with the faces we would leave for another few winters marked as such. The site visit and the written quote are free.
The work
Cottage lime, estate cement, and telling them apart
The older solid walls. A minority of houses in Lytchett Matravers are pre-1919: solid wall, no cavity, handling water by letting it evaporate back out through the joint. That works only while the mortar stays breathable and softer than the brick.
On a Lytchett Matravers cottage we rake those joints by hand to about twice the joint width, never with an angle grinder or disc cutter, and point back in an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to the original for sand, colour and texture, damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up. BS EN 459 sets out what the different limes are for. The profile goes back to what the wall carries, which on a Victorian or Edwardian frontage is flush or slightly recessed rather than weather struck.
Seventies and eighties outer skins. Most of Lytchett Matravers went up after the war, the busiest years being the nineteen seventies and early eighties. That is cavity work: a single skin of fired brick in cement and sand, bucket handle or weather struck. It fails differently from lime. The joint pits and opens at the arris rather than washing out, and once rain stands in the opening a frost lifts the face off the brick. Matching means matching the sand and the gauge as well as the colour, so a trial panel goes up somewhere discreet, judged on how it will look with weathering on it.
Faces that have already blown. Where frost has taken a face off a Lytchett Matravers brick we cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it against a sample held on the wall. Filling the hollow with mortar leaves a patch that never matches. Spalling gathers in the same places on nearly every house: under sills, beside a downpipe, at the corners of a bay, and just above ground where a drive has been laid against the wall.
Chimney stacks. Many houses in Lytchett Matravers are detached or bungalows, so there are a lot of stacks standing alone with weather on four sides and nothing warming them. Mortar up there goes loose and friable years before anything at ground level, and the water it lets in shows as penetrating damp on a bedroom ceiling. Repointing a stack and renewing the flaunching round the pots is work at height, so the access is the bulk of the cost. A low stack sometimes comes off a tower; anything on a main ridge is a scaffold.
Front walls and porch brickwork. A low Lytchett Matravers front wall is exposed on both faces and often has a coping that has stopped doing its job. Water gets in at the top, freezes and pushes the wall apart. Repointing the coping bed is quick work next to leaving it.
What we will not do is point over movement. Regular horizontal cracking every fifth or sixth course is corroding wall ties rather than tired mortar, and filling those joints hides it for a season. We say so in writing and turn the work down.
How it runs
Raking out and repointing, one elevation at a time
Thomas comes to Lytchett Matravers and looks at the joints himself, scratching a few with a key to see how far back the decay goes, and prices each elevation on its own. Raking, the mortar, spalled bricks and access are separate lines on the quote, with waste removal at the end. The whole job then sits with his company, from quote to finish.
Lytchett Matravers is mostly brick from the seventies and eighties, and those walls take a sand and cement mortar matched to what is there. The handful of pre-war cottages near the centre are different: softer brick, often laid in lime, raked out by hand and repointed in lime. Walls are sheeted if frost or heavy rain comes in, mortar is cleaned off the faces before it sets, and paths are swept each evening. Spalled bricks behind a joint are shown to you on camera, each with its own price, before one is cut out.
Like for like repointing is repair. You need no planning application, and building control has no part in it. With no conservation area, the joint profile and mortar colour are yours to choose on most addresses. The exception is the fifteen listed entries, the parish church among them, where the mortar is protected fabric and listed building consent from Dorset Council comes first.
Cost
Soft brick, hard mortar and what the price turns on
Square metres tell you very little. The joints do. Depth and method. Joints need raking back to sound mortar, deeper than most people expect. Raking by hand on soft brick is slow but it keeps the arris. A disc is quicker on a hard seventies facing brick, but on a soft one it widens the joint and chips the edges.
The mix. Cement on soft old brick holds water against it, and the face blows off in the first hard frost. Lime is slower, because it cures gradually and has to be kept damp and protected, so it takes more days. On the newer houses a matched sand and cement mortar is the right call and it goes quicker.
Access. A bungalow is worked from the ground or a low tower. A gable or chimney stack on a detached house needs scaffold, which the work at height rules put on a line of its own. How long it stands counts as much as how big it is.
Spalled bricks. Each one cut out and replaced is its own line, and matching them is part of it.
Put these to any other quote: how deep, by hand or by disc, what mix and was it matched to the wall, and how many bricks are coming out?
If water is getting in
Damp on an inside wall after driven rain
If a damp patch shows on an inside wall after wind-driven rain and dries out between storms, open joints are a likely cause, particularly on a south west gable or around a chimney. On a bungalow it often turns up as a stain on the ceiling by the chimney breast.
Ring us instead of using the form. We come and look, and if the weather is set against us we sheet the wall or point the worst joints as a stopgap, then price the elevation once it has dried enough to show what is sound. Our booked work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. We may be on a scaffold when you ring, and if so we phone back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
The mix your neighbour used is probably wrong for your wall
The village grew in two pushes with a long gap between them, so a cottage put up before the First World War can sit fifty yards from a house built in nineteen seventy eight. From the pavement they read as two versions of the same thing. They are not. The cottage is solid wall and has to breathe out through its joints. The house has a cavity behind the brick and does not.
That matters more here than in a village of one age, because neighbours share who they used and what went on. A firm sand and cement mix on a seventies wall is reasonable. Put the same mix into a soft old joint and it seals the wall: water that used to leave through the mortar leaves through the brick face instead, and the first frost takes the face with it. You end up with joints that look sound and bricks crumbling. With no conservation area, nobody at the council checks the specification for you either.
So have the wall identified before you agree anything, and get the mix and joint profile written into the quote rather than left to somebody's habit on the day.
Who you are dealing with
Who will be pointing your walls
Thomas Hannen prices the job in person, and his company stays accountable for it until the last joint is finished. We are about eleven miles away in Boscombe and we cover Lytchett Matravers, Lytchett Minster, Organford, Upton and over to Wareham and Poole. Wareham is Dorset Council and Poole is BCP Council.
The business is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, a record you can pull up in a minute. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You pay nothing for the site visit or for the quote in writing. Before you book a visit in Lytchett Matravers, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Lytchett Matravers?
Most repairs in Lytchett Matravers 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.
| Question | In Lytchett Matravers |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Lytchett Matravers. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Lytchett Matravers, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Lytchett Matravers. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Lytchett Matravers. |
Questions
Questions about repointing in Lytchett Matravers
Our neighbour had theirs pointed in sand and cement. Should ours be the same?
Only if you own the same kind of wall. If short headers run through the pattern every few courses and the wall reads thin at a window reveal, it is solid and wants lime. If it reads thick and the bricks are all laid lengthways, it is cavity and a cement mix is reasonable. We settle that on the visit.
The joints on our seventies brickwork are pitted rather than falling out. Does that need doing?
Not necessarily this year, but worth watching. Pitting means water can stand in the joint instead of running off, and that is the stage before frost starts taking brick faces. If it is only on the weather side, do that elevation and leave the others. Both go in the quote.
Can you point one elevation now and the rest later?
Yes, and on most village properties that is what we would suggest. The south and west faces run a decade ahead of the sheltered ones, so doing the lot at once means repointing mortar with years left in it. The one thing we would not split is a chimney, because the platform is the cost.
Will the new mortar look obviously different from the old?
It will look lighter for a year or two, then settle. That is why we make a trial panel and ask you to judge it on how it will weather. Matching the sand matters more than the colour, since the sand gives a joint its texture from a few feet away.
Do you take the old mortar and rubble away with you?
Yes. Raking out makes a lot of dust and spoil, and none of it is left on your drive. Sheeting goes down before we start, and disposal is a separate line on the quote.
Nearby, and next door
Repointing near Lytchett Matravers
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Have the wall identified before you agree a price
Thomas walks all four elevations, scrapes a few joints, photographs what he finds and puts the mix, the profile and the price in writing. Free.