Repointing in New Milton

Eighties and after. A third of New Milton was built from 1983 onwards, the eighties busiest of all. That brickwork is hard: dense fired bricks in a strong cement and sand mortar struck to a bucket handle as the gang went up the scaffold. It debonds rather than eroding, so a hairline opens where mortar meets brick, the perpends go first, and rain gets into the cavity through joints that still look full. On the weather side those joints pit and a frost takes the arris off.

Post-war housing. Nearly half the town dates from the thirty odd years after the war, when the mortar was often gauged with lime as well as cement. It fails more gently: the joint wears back at the arris and the face goes in flakes. Matching means matching the sand and the gauge, not only the colour.

Getting the profile right. Bucket handle is the rounded one, weather struck is angled back at the top so water runs off, flush sits level with the brick face and recessed behind it. We identify the profile first, strike the repair to match, and put up a trial panel for you to judge in daylight on how it will look weathered.

Terraces, flats and communal walls. A quarter of the homes here are terraced and another quarter flats, so much of the brickwork is shared: gables belonging to two households, parapets running over more than one property. We price that for a management company as readily as for a single owner. Leaseholders should note that major works are usually consulted on under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.

Faces that have already blown. We cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it against a sample held on the wall, rather than filling the hollow with mortar that never matches. Spalling gathers under sills, beside downpipes and just above a path laid up against the house.

The older end of the town, and the stacks. A small share of New Milton predates the war and some of that is solid wall, which loses water only through the joint and so has to stay breathable. Those walls get an NHL lime or lime putty mix matched to the original sand, finished flush or slightly recessed. Whatever the age, the method is the same: joints out to twice their width, by hand, the angle grinder left in the van on anything soft, damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up. Stacks go loose and friable first because nothing warms them, and repointing one with the flaunching round the pots is priced as its own line.

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

Getting to it. A terraced house with a gable shared next door, an eighties detached with a stack on the ridge and a block of flats with one long communal elevation 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, while lime is the right answer on most pre-1919 walls here.

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.

Estate brickwork from the eighties has a uniformity older walls never had. One gang laid an elevation over a few days, struck every joint with the same tool at the same angle, and used mortar out of the same mixer. The joints are effectively identical, and the eye is very good at spotting the one that is not.

That changes what a good repair looks like. On a Victorian wall you can get away with a colour slightly out, because the original was never consistent. Here you cannot, and colour is not what betrays it. Profile is. A flush patch in a bucket handle wall reads as a pale stripe in low sun because it throws no shadow, and it will still be doing that in ten years. Failures on this brickwork are local rather than general, so you are almost always patching, which makes matching the shape the whole game.

Two things to ask for. Get the profile named in the quote, so it says bucket handle or weather struck to match rather than just repointed. And look at the trial panel from where people actually see the wall, in raking light rather than at midday.

We cover New Milton, Barton on Sea, Bashley, Ashley, Hordle and across to Milford on Sea, broadly BH25, with New Forest District Council as the authority. 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.