Repointing walls in Ridge

The bottom courses. This is the part of the job that is different here. The water table sits close to the surface and a solid wall draws moisture up out of it, so the joints at the base stay wet, go friable and wash out. The mortar that goes back has to be the most permeable thing on the wall, so the moisture and the dissolved salts leave through the joint rather than through the brick. Expect to renew that band of pointing from time to time. It is doing its job when it goes.

Older solid walls. The houses and outbuildings here are solid wall rather than cavity, so a wall sheds water only through the joint and has to stay breathable. Those get an NHL lime or lime putty mortar gauged to the original sand for colour and texture, finished flush or slightly recessed on a period elevation rather than weather struck. Joints come out to about twice their width by hand, with the angle grinder left in the van, damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up.

The face that looks at the water. Little stands between these buildings and the open channel, so the south west elevation takes driven rain with force behind it and runs years ahead of the sheltered sides. That is why we price by elevation. Doing the exposed face and leaving the rest is often the honest answer.

Spalled and fretted faces. Salt carried in off the water sits in the outer few millimetres of brick and mortar, holds damp between showers, then breaks the material apart as it crystallises. Where a face has gone we cut the brick out whole and turn it, or replace it against a sample off the wall. Filling the hollow with mortar leaves a patch that never matches. A trial panel goes up somewhere discreet first, judged in daylight for how it will look weathered.

Stacks and outbuildings. A chimney takes weather on four sides with nothing warming it, so its joints go loose and crumbling long before the walls below. We repoint the stack, renew the flaunching around the pots and make good the junctions. A low stack sometimes comes off a tower, but anything higher is a scaffold and a line of its own. The outbuildings here are worth doing while that access is standing.

What we will not do is point a wall that is wet from below and call it fixed. If a path or border has been built up against the brickwork, or a gully has stopped taking water, that gets dealt with or the new joints go the way of the old ones.

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

Getting to it. A cottage with a soft brick plinth, an outbuilding with a gable open across the water and a low boundary wall are three different set ups before a joint is opened. A chimney or a gable wants a scaffold, a boundary wall wants nothing. 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 it is the only safe way, because a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off either side. 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.

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.

Ridge sits low, with the harbour on one side and river ground on the other, and the water table is never far down. Higher up a wall the weather decides how long a joint lasts. At the base it is the ground, and the two want different answers. That is the most useful thing to understand about brickwork here, and the thing most quotes ignore.

Moisture drawn up into a wall has to leave somewhere, and it carries dissolved salts with it. Put a soft, open, lime based mortar in the bottom courses and it leaves through the joint: the mortar takes the wear, the salts crystallise in it, and in time you renew a band of pointing. Put a hard cement mix there instead, which is what usually happens because a plinth is expected to look tough, and you have sealed the only exit. The water and salt leave through the brick face instead, and the face comes off with them. That is why the worst spalling on a wall like this sits immediately above a smart looking cement plinth.

So ask a simple question of any quote: is the mix at the bottom of the wall different from the mix higher up, and if not, why not. Ask what is being done about the ground outside as well.

We cover Ridge, Stoborough, Wareham, Arne, Sandford and round the harbour edge, broadly BH20, 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 prices every job himself. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are free.