Milborne St Andrew repointing and mortar matching
Old mortar out by hand, a mix matched to what came out, and a straight answer on which elevations are actually due.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Your joints are due when the lime has gone sandy, weathered back behind the brick, or damp shows inside after rain. On the older walls in Milborne St Andrew the mortar has to stay the softest thing in the wall, so the job is raking out by hand and repointing in a matched lime: get that right and the joint wears slowly while the brick stays whole. Where brick faces have already gone, they need cutting out and replacing.
Worn walls in Milborne St Andrew show it in the joints, on the brick faces and on the sills. Mortar gone back to sand, so a joint empties under a thumbnail and you can see daylight through a perpend. Brick faces flaking away behind a band of pointing that is still hard and standing proud. Or grit collecting on a sill after every dry windy week, which is a wall quietly emptying itself.
Every one of those is mortar rather than structure, and none gets better on its own. Water sits in an open joint, freezes and takes a little more of the wall each winter. We go round your whole house in Milborne St Andrew, scrape a few joints to see what the original mortar is, tap the courses for anything that has come away behind the face, and photograph each elevation. Then you get a written itemised quote with the mix on it, and a straight answer on which faces are due. The site visit and the quote are free.
The work
Where the pointing fails on a village wall, top to bottom
The head of the wall goes first. The top few courses take rain on both faces and down onto the coping, so water stands in the joints and frost lifts them first. On a house that is the course under the verge and around the eaves, on a free standing wall the whole head.
Repointing those joints and re-bedding a loose coping stone in a matched lime mix deals with most of it, and it is quick work next to what happens if the top stays open.
The weather face. On a Milborne St Andrew house the elevation that takes the driven rain runs years ahead of the sheltered ones, and it is where the joints have washed out deepest. We rake it back by hand with a plugging chisel to roughly twice the width of the joint, until we reach sound mortar, and point it in lifts in a natural hydraulic lime gauged with a sand matched to what came out. The wall is damped down first, the joints brushed back once the mix has taken up, and the profile put back as the building carries it, flush or slightly recessed rather than struck at an angle.
The middle, where somebody has been before. Plenty of walls in Milborne St Andrew carry a stripe of sand and cement from a repair thirty or forty years ago. A hard joint in a solid wall shuts the escape route for moisture, which then leaves through the brick face and pops the surface off at the first hard frost. Taking that out is slow hand work and no disc cutter goes near it, because an angle grinder widens the joint and takes the arris off a soft handmade brick for good.
The bottom courses. Most of the older cottages in Milborne St Andrew have no damp proof course and never did, so the lowest metre stays damper and carries salts up with it. Mortar down there turns friable faster than anything above head height. We point it in the most permeable mix the wall will take, and where a border or path has been built up against the brickwork we say so, because pointing a base course standing in wet ground is money spent twice.
Spalled faces, and the stack. Where a face has blown on a Milborne St Andrew wall, pointing round it just frames the damage, so the brick comes out whole and a reclaimed match goes in. Chimneys go last on the survey and first on the priority list: a stack stands clear of everything, takes weather on four sides, and its joints and flaunching go friable long before the house walls do.
How it runs
Raking out and repointing, one elevation at a time
Thomas looks at your Milborne St Andrew pointing himself before anything is priced. He scratches a few joints to see how soft they are, checks whether the old mortar is lime or cement, and looks for bricks that have lost their faces. The quote then gives each elevation its own line, with access, raking out, the mortar mix, any brick replacement and disposal set out separately. Raking out, mixing and pointing then follow under the one quote.
Joints are raked by hand to an even depth, and the new mortar is pressed in firmly, finished to match the joint profile on the rest of the house, and kept from drying too fast in sun or wind. On a cottage fronting the road that means working from the footway or a scaffold with the path kept open. Dust sheets go down, the site is swept daily and the raked-out mortar goes with us. When raking out turns up a cracked brick or a failed lintel, you see it in a photograph, with a price, and decide from there.
Putting back pointing in the same mortar and style is repair, not development, so no application is made and building control is not involved. Parts of the older village fall within the Milborne St Andrew Conservation Area, where a change of mortar colour or joint style that alters how the house looks is worth checking first. A listed building needs listed building consent from Dorset Council before a joint is opened, and we look the address up before we quote.
Cost
What decides the cost of repointing a wall
We never price by the square metre, because until someone has looked at the joints, the size of a wall tells you very little.
Access. A low garden wall is worked from the ground. A two storey Milborne St Andrew front on the main road needs a scaffold on the footway, and a chimney stack needs one up to the roof. The work at height rules are why that is a separate line.
Depth and condition. Joints that have to come back a long way, and faces that have already spalled, set the hours far more than square metres do. Soft old brick has to be raked by hand, which is slow, and it is the only way that does not damage the arrises.
The mix. On most pre-1919 walls in this chalk country the right answer is a lime mortar, matched in colour and texture with a sand chosen for it. Cement pointing on a soft brick holds water in, and the next hard frost blows the face off, which turns a repointing job into a brick replacement job.
What was done before. Hard cement from an earlier repair has to be cut out with care, and that takes longer than raking out old lime.
Ask each quote how deep the joints are raked and by what method, what mix is proposed and whether it has been matched, and whether the scaffold is in the figure.
If water is getting in
Rain getting through open joints
When joints have washed out, driven rain goes straight through to the inside face of a solid wall, and on a chimney it gets behind the flashings too. Damp patches after a wet week, sand trickling from the joints or a stain spreading down a chimney breast are the signs.
Give us a ring instead of using the form. We book repointing Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, but water coming through is worth phoning about, and an unanswered call gets a call back as soon as we can manage it. We sheet or temporarily point the worst of it, and the full elevation is priced once the wall has dried enough to see what is sound.
Worth knowing
Nobody here will stop you putting the wrong mortar on
Much of Milborne St Andrew lies inside the Milborne St Andrew Conservation Area. Like for like repointing is repair and needs no consent, though a change of mortar colour or joint profile on a visible wall is worth raising with Dorset Council first. What the designation does not check is the mix itself.
Unless your address is listed, that means the only person who will ever check whether a soft chalkland cottage is about to be pointed in sand and cement is you, on the day you accept a quote.
That matters more with mortar than with almost anything else on a house, because the mistake is not easily undone. Cement in a soft old joint has to be cut back out by hand, and every pass takes a little more brick. It costs more to remove than the pointing cost to put in, and by then you usually have spalled faces to cut out as well. Nobody sets out to do that: a strong mix is quicker to work, sets in any weather, and sounds like it will last longer.
The check takes two minutes. Scrape a little of the old mortar out of a sheltered joint. If it crumbles between your fingers, feels sandy and shows the odd white fleck, the wall was built in lime and wants lime back. If it is grey, rings against a chisel and refuses to give, somebody has already been there in cement. Then ask whoever is quoting what they intend to mix.
Who you are dealing with
The business doing your repointing
The drive from Boscombe to Milborne St Andrew is about 20 miles, and we cover the village alongside Tolpuddle, Winterborne Whitechurch, Bere Regis and Puddletown in DT11 and DT2. Listed building consent and planning are Dorset Council's.
The business is a limited company, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales with the number 15471719, and it is Thomas Hannen's. He is the one who scratches the joints and prices the job. A Checkatrade customer, verified, rated us 10 out of 10. You pay nothing for the site visit or for the written quote with its itemised lines. Before you book a visit in Milborne St Andrew, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Milborne St Andrew?
Most repairs in Milborne St Andrew 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 Milborne St Andrew |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Milborne St Andrew. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Milborne St Andrew Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Milborne St Andrew. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Milborne St Andrew. |
Questions
Questions about repointing in Milborne St Andrew
What is a lime mortar actually made of?
Sand and a lime binder, and on an old wall the sand is most of it. We use a natural hydraulic lime here, gauged so the finished joint sits a shade softer than the brick, with a sharp sand matched to the colour and grain of the original. No cement in it. The sand is what you see, which is why matching it takes the time.
How long before we can stop worrying about the new pointing?
Lime takes up in days and gains strength for months, so it is protected while young: damped down, sheeted against driving rain and kept off a hard frost for the first week. That is why it is worked in spring and autumn rather than in a heatwave or a cold snap. Once carbonated it is doing its job for a very long time.
Can you point just the one bad patch?
Sometimes, and we say so if it is sensible. A single failed area on a sheltered elevation is worth patching. A frontage where the joints have gone across the whole face is not, because fresh mortar next to eighty year old mortar reads as a patch for years. We price by elevation so you can see the difference.
You are twenty miles out. Does that change how the work is booked?
It changes the shape of it, not the price of the mortar. Pointing wants a continuous run, with the wall damped between lifts and the new work protected overnight, so we plan a village this far out as full consecutive days, not odd half days. Thomas Hannen still drives out to price it himself, and that visit is free.
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Find out what your wall was built in
Thomas comes out, scrapes a joint, works out what the original mortar is and puts an itemised written price in your hand. It costs nothing.