Repointing across Poole and the Old Town

Old Town and High Street frontages. The streets behind the Quay are solid wall, handmade fired brick, no cavity anywhere. Those walls stay dry by letting damp evaporate back out through the joint, which works only while the mortar is softer and more permeable than the brick. We rake by hand to roughly twice the width of the joint, never with a disc cutter, which widens the joint and takes the arris off either side. Joints are brushed out and damped down, then filled with a breathable NHL lime gauged with a sand matched for grade and colour, or a lime putty mix where the wall is old enough to want one. The profile is agreed first: flush, weather struck and bucket handle all read differently from the pavement, and a recessed joint on an exposed frontage holds water it should be shedding.

Taking a cement overcoat off a period terrace. Most Victorian and Edwardian terraces around the town centre have been pointed at least once in sand and cement. The tell is read backwards by most people: the joints look hard and sound while the faces spall, because moisture that used to leave through the mortar now leaves through the face and frost does the rest. Cutting that out is slow. Where a face has gone we cut the brick out and put a matched reclaimed stock in.

Inter-war and 1930s walls. Close to a fifth of Poole went up between the wars, cavity built in stretcher bond, in a cement gauge rather than a pure lime. Lime is right on a pre-1919 solid wall and wrong here, so we match what came out rather than apply one mix to every job. Usually it is the weather side and the top few courses, not the house.

Stacks, parapets and boundary walls. A chimney is the oldest and most weathered masonry on most buildings and sits above the flashings, so an open joint there puts water into the roof rather than the wall. Parapets take it on both faces. Front boundary walls take it from the coping down and are usually the friable ones. A stack wants a scaffold, a gable often comes off a tower, a garden wall neither.

Flats and shared elevations. A third of the homes in the town are flats, and the outside walls belong to the block rather than any one flat. We survey and price a whole elevation and give the freeholder or managing agent enough detail to work from.

No rate per square metre. The area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.

Getting to it. A terraced frontage on the back of the pavement in the Old Town, a semi in Oakdale with a side path down one edge and a top floor flat in a block off Poole Road are three different jobs before anybody rakes a joint. The work at height rules are why access is its own priced line.

The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick the only safe way: a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off. Depth, and whether faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than area does.

Matching is the part that shows. Too strong a mix is the classic mistake: cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first hard frost. Lime cures slower, and suits most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by what, what the mix is, how many spalled bricks come out, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

We cover the Old Town and the Quay, Hamworthy, Longfleet, Creekmoor, Oakdale, Parkstone and Broadstone, broadly BH15 and the postcodes either side of it, under BCP Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written itemised quote are free.