Repointing at Post Green and Lytchett Minster

Older frontage, in lime. The brick along the Dorchester Road frontage and around the older part of Lytchett Minster is solid wall with no cavity behind it, and it sheds water by letting it evaporate back out through the joint. That only works while the mortar stays softer and more permeable than the brick, so it comes out by hand to about twice the joint width and goes back as an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to the original sand. A disc cutter would widen the joint and take the arris off a soft brick either side.

Getting the profile right, because here it counts. Flush, slightly recessed, weather struck and bucket handle all shed water perfectly well, but they do not look the same from the road, and a period frontage usually wants flush or a shade recessed. The one we spend most time undoing is strap pointing: a raised band of hard mortar applied over the face of the brick, which traps water behind itself and reads as a mistake from thirty yards. Taking it off without damaging the brick is slow work and priced as such.

Matching the colour, which is the sand. Mortar colour comes overwhelmingly from the sand rather than from anything added to it, so matching means finding the right sand rather than tinting a grey mix. We take a sample of sound original from somewhere sheltered and put a trial panel up on a discreet part of the wall for you to see in daylight. Fresh mortar reads lighter than aged, so the panel is judged on how it will weather.

The post-war majority. Over half the homes around Post Green were built between 1945 and 1982, and that is cavity work: a single skin of hard fired brick in a cement and sand mortar. It fails differently from lime. The joint pits and opens at the arris instead of washing out, water sits in the recess, and a hard frost lifts the fired face off the brick. Those want a gauged mix of similar strength going back in, and the blown faces cut out and replaced against a sample.

Stacks, boundary walls and copings. A chimney has weather on four sides and nothing warming it from inside, so its joints go friable and open years ahead of the walls below, and the penetrating damp that follows appears on a ceiling. Free standing boundary walls along the road have weather on both faces and a coping that has often lost its bedding, which lets water straight into the top of the wall to freeze.

No rate per square metre: the area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at what the joints are actually like.

Getting to it. A period house fronting the road, a post-war bungalow a tower will reach along its whole length, and a free standing boundary wall are three different set ups. A chimney or a gable wants a scaffold, and how long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is. Access under the work at height rules is a priced line, not absorbed into a rate.

The joints decide it, not the wall. How deep the joints have to come back, and whether the faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does. Hand raking is slow, but a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off.

Matching is the part that shows. Too strong a mix holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first hard frost. Lime is the right answer on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by hand or disc, what the mix is and whether it was matched, how many spalled bricks are being replaced, and whether the scaffold is in the price.

We cover Post Green, Lytchett Minster, Lytchett Matravers, Upton, Hamworthy and across to Wareham and Poole, broadly BH16 and BH15, 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 is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.