Mortar and repointing in Lytchett Matravers

The older solid walls. Roughly one house in nine in the village is 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. 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 the village 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 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. A third of the village is detached and a quarter 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 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 rather than take the work.

No rate per square metre: the square metres tell you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.

Getting to it. A pre-war cottage on the village street, a nineteen seventies detached house with a stack on the ridge and a low front wall are three different set ups. A chimney or gable wants a scaffold, a low wall a tower or nothing at all. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules make it a priced line.

The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick the only safe way, because a disc cutter widens the joint and takes the arris off. How deep the joints come back, and whether faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does. The mix matters as much: cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first frost.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked, by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it was matched, how many spalled bricks are cut out, and whether the scaffold is in. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

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.

We cover Lytchett Matravers, Lytchett Minster, Organford, Upton and across to Wareham and Poole, broadly BH16 and the postcodes around it, all of it under Dorset Council. 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 prices every job himself. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit and the written quote are free.