Repointing brickwork in Sandford

The mortar of the period. Nearly everything here is cavity work: a single outer skin of fired brick in cement and sand, bucket handle or weather struck. The earlier of it was often gauged with a little lime and is forgiving. The later tends to be straight sand and cement, mixed strong, and that is what causes trouble, because a joint harder than the brick drives moisture out through the face. The failure looks the same either way: the joint erodes at the arris, rain stands in the opening, and a frost takes the face off in flakes.

How the joints come out. Raked to about twice their width by hand, perpends individually. The angle grinder stays in the van on anything soft, because a disc cutter widens the joint and takes the arris off. Joints are damped down before filling, and brushed back once the mix has taken up.

Shared gables and shared stacks. Half the housing in Sandford is semi detached or terraced, so a gable often belongs to two households and a stack serves two flues. It is worth doing the whole elevation off one platform rather than each half separately, and on a shared wall there is a notice period before anybody cuts into it.

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 collects under sills, beside a downpipe, at the corners of a bay, and just above a path or drive laid up against the house.

The older handful. A small part of the village is pre-1919, solid wall rather than cavity: no gap behind the brick, so it loses water only by evaporation through the joint and has to stay breathable. Those get an NHL lime or lime putty mix matched to the original sand, finished flush or slightly recessed, and nothing wrecks one faster than hard cement pointing.

Matching, and what we will not match. A trial panel goes up somewhere discreet so you can judge colour and texture in daylight, as it will look with weathering on it. We match the sand and the finish. What we will not match is the strength of a mix that was too hard for the brick, because that is the fault you are paying to correct.

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

Getting to it. A nineteen seventies semi with a gable shared with next door, a bungalow with a stack on the ridge and a low front wall onto the pavement 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.

A quarter of the village went up in the late sixties and early seventies, and estate housing of that period was laid out with the same orientation house after house. So the same elevation on every property in a row takes the same weather, was pointed in the same mortar within a season or two of its neighbours, and reaches the same stage together. When one gable in a row starts opening up, the rest are a couple of years behind rather than a decade.

Two useful things follow. A neighbour who has had work done is a free test panel a few doors away: look at how it has weathered and ask what went on. The second is the one people get wrong. Do not tell anybody to match what is already in the joints. Much of the pointing from that period was mixed strong, harder than the brick it sits between, which is why the faces are spalling while the joints look sound from the pavement. The right repair matches sand, colour and profile, and is deliberately softer on strength.

If you share a gable or a stack with next door, ask whether they want theirs doing at the same time. The platform is the part that does not get cheaper for being split.

We cover Sandford, Holton Heath, Wareham, Stoborough, Lytchett Minster and out towards Bere Regis, broadly BH20, all of it 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 site visit and the written quote are free.