Repointing around Merritown and Hurn
Open ground, driven rain and one elevation taking all of it. We price the wall that needs doing and say what the others can wait for.
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 washed back on the weather side, crumble under a key, or damp shows inside after driven rain. There is very little between a wall at Merritown and the weather, so the south west face runs years ahead of the sheltered sides, and the job is usually raking out and repointing that face properly in a mix to suit the brick. A wall that has cracked right through needs rebuilding.
The buildings around the lane at Merritown are a mixed bunch. Older cottages, houses of various dates, farm outbuildings, stables and long stretches of boundary wall, and they do not all want the same treatment. What they have in common is exposure. Joints open up faster, faces spall sooner, and a stack that would be fine in a sheltered street loses its mortar here in half the time.
We survey the whole property, outbuildings included if you want them looked at, scrape a few joints to see how deep the decay goes, tap along the courses to find where the pointing has come away from the brick, and photograph it. Back comes a written itemised quote with each elevation on its own line. The visit is free and Thomas prices the job himself.
The work
Repointing on buildings with nothing in front of them
The exposed elevation, first. Out in Merritown the repair usually starts with one wall rather than the whole house. We rake the failed joints out to about twice their width, clean the back of the joint rather than leaving a shelf of old mortar, damp the brickwork down, fill in layers and brush the face back once the mix has taken up.
Perpends come out by hand. A disc has its place on a hard modern bed joint but never on soft brick: it widens the joint and takes the arris off either side, and on a cottage wall that is damage no pointing will hide.
Old solid wall, in lime. The older cottages and farm buildings in Merritown are solid wall with no cavity, built in soft brick and lime. Those have to stay breathable, since the only way the wall loses water is by letting it evaporate back out through the joint. The mix goes back as NHL lime or lime putty, gauged and matched to the original sand for colour and texture. Where such a wall was pointed in sand and cement in the last fifty years, the faces crumble while the joints look sound, and taking that hard mortar out is the repair that stops it.
Later brickwork, and the faces frost has taken. The more recent houses are cavity built in fired brick with a cement mortar, and their joints erode at the arris rather than washing out, until water stands in them and a hard frost lifts the mortar and the brick face with it. Spalled faces are cut out and the brick turned or replaced against a sample, never filled. A lot of lost faces along one course usually points at something above it, a blocked gutter or a failed downpipe.
Chimneys, gable ends and flaunching. A Merritown stack in open country is the most weathered masonry on the building and the least visited. Its joints go friable, then hollow, then open, and the penetrating damp that follows comes out on a bedroom ceiling long after the mortar went. Repointing a stack, cutting out the worst bricks and renewing the flaunching is work at height, so it wants a scaffold rather than a tower, priced as its own line.
Outbuildings, stables and boundary walls. Free standing walls take weather on both faces with no roof to keep the top dry, so the coping joints go first and rain gets into the core, freezes and pushes the wall apart. Repointing the coping and the exposed side, and cutting out the frost damaged bricks, is short work that saves a rebuild. We quote for a stable wall or a store as readily as for the house.
How it runs
Repointing a wall at Merritown, start to finish
Thomas comes out and picks at the joints on each elevation with a small tool, to see how far the mortar has gone and whether it is lime or cement. He writes the price himself, and one company is answerable from the first joint raked to the last one pointed. The written quote shows access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, spalled bricks to cut out, and waste removal.
Joints are raked out by hand to a sound depth, never widened with a disc that takes the arris off the brick. The mix is matched to the wall: lime for soft old brick, and a cement mix only where the brick is hard enough to take it. Windows, sills and paths are sheeted against dust, and scaffold goes up on boards where the ground is soft. Nothing is left half-raked overnight. If raking reveals a cracked brick or a failed lintel, it is photographed and priced, and you decide before we do it.
Repointing to match what is there counts as repair, so neither the planners nor building control need to be involved. Merritown has no conservation area of its own. Listed buildings are different: the mortar is protected fabric and consent comes before a joint is opened, and the council keeps the list for the whole of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. Where a wall is shared, we agree it with the neighbour first.
Cost
What makes one repointing job cost more than another
Repointing in Merritown has no rate per square metre. The state of the joints, and how far back they need to go, matters more than the size of the wall.
Depth of raking. Joints are raked back far enough for the new mortar to key in. Where the old mortar has washed out deeper, the raking and the filling both take longer.
Hand work. On soft brick, raking by hand is slow, and it is the only safe way. A disc is faster and it chips the arris, which leaves a wider, uglier joint for good.
The mix. Too strong a mix is the common mistake. Cement mortar holds water against a soft brick, and the next hard frost blows the face off. Lime cures more slowly and suits most pre-1919 walls. On the south west side, which takes the driven rain here, getting the mix right matters most.
Spalled bricks. Faces that have already blown need cutting out and replacing, and a matching brick can take time to find.
Access. Low walls are done from a tower. A stack or a two storey elevation needs scaffold, and because of the work at height rules it is priced as a separate item.
Ask the other firms: how deep are the joints raked, and with what? Is it lime or cement? How many bricks are coming out?
If water is getting in
Rain getting through open mortar joints
Please ring instead of using the form. Joints that have washed out let driven rain through to the inside face of the wall, and on a chimney the water finds the lead flashings too.
We come and look, sheet or temporarily point the worst of it, and price the whole elevation once it has dried enough to show what is sound. Tell us which side is wet, because the south west face gets the worst of the weather out in Merritown. We do planned work Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. A missed call is always returned, as soon as we can manage.
Worth knowing
Exposure decides the joint profile, not just the mix
Almost nothing stands between Merritown's buildings and the prevailing weather. Wind driven rain does not fall on a wall, it is pushed into it, and it goes into the joint rather than the brick because the joint is the softer and more absorbent of the two. That is why the south west elevation of a building out here can have joints raked back by weather while the sheltered face of the same house still looks near enough new.
What most people do not know is that the shape you finish the joint to matters as much as what it is made of. A weather struck joint, cut back at the top and left proud at the bottom, sheds water off the face of the wall. A bucket handle joint does much the same and compacts the surface as it is formed, which is why it wears well. A recessed or square raked joint looks smart on a sheltered courtyard wall and is a poor idea on an exposed elevation, because it leaves a small ledge on every brick for water to sit on and freeze. So on a wall at Merritown we will normally recommend weather struck or bucket handle on the exposed face even where you would rather have something flatter, and we will explain why before you decide. If a quote does not say what profile the joints are being finished to, ask.
Who you are dealing with
Who repoints your wall
We work from Boscombe, 3.6 miles from Merritown, and cover the Hurn and Parley side of BH23 as well as Christchurch and Bournemouth. The planning authority is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Merritown, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Thomas Hannen owns the business, and he checks your joints and prices the repointing personally. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 over on Checkatrade. Coming out costs you nothing, and the quote, written and itemised, is free as well.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Merritown?
Most repairs in Merritown 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 Merritown |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Merritown. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Merritown, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Merritown. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Merritown. |
Questions
Questions about repointing in Merritown
Only one wall looks bad. Is it worth doing the rest?
The rest is usually not worth doing yet. On an exposed site like Merritown the difference between the weather face and the sheltered faces can be ten years or more, so doing all four at once means paying early for three of them. We price each elevation separately, tell you which ones we would leave, and put that in the quote so nobody has to take it on trust.
Can you quote for the outbuildings as well as the house?
Yes. Stables, stores, garden walls and old farm buildings all get looked at on the same visit if you want them included, and they go on the quote as separate lines so you can take them in whatever order suits you. Free standing walls are often the cheapest thing on the list and the thing that deteriorates fastest.
How do we know whether our wall is solid or cavity?
We can usually tell from the bond, because a solid wall shows headers, the short ends of bricks, at regular intervals and a cavity wall generally does not. Age helps too, and so does the depth of a window reveal. It matters because it decides whether the joint gets lime or cement, and that is the decision the whole job turns on.
What happens if the weather turns while you are working?
Fresh mortar does not want frost or driving rain on it before it has set, and out in Merritown it can get both in the same afternoon. We sheet the working face, we do not point into a forecast frost, and if a week has to move we will tell you instead of pushing on and leave you with a joint that fails early.
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Repointing near Merritown
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Have the weather face looked at
Free site visit, every elevation photographed and tested, and a written itemised quote covering access, raking out, the mortar and any brick replacement.