Repointing brickwork in Sandford

The mortar of the period matters. Nearly everything in Sandford 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 Sandford 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.

We never price repointing by the square metre. The joints tell you more than the area does. Depth of raking. Joints on a seventies Sandford wall may only need raking back to sound mortar, while washed out joints on a weather-facing gable go deeper. Deeper means slower, and that is where most of the hours go.

Hand or disc. A disc cutter is quick on hard cement joints, but on soft brick it widens the joint and takes the arris off. We use one only where the brick can take it.

The mix. A cement and sand mortar suits most of the post-war walls in Sandford. On an older cottage built before the First World War, lime is the right choice, because hard cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows in the frost. Lime takes longer to work and to cure.

Chimneys and high gables. A stack, or a gable you share with next door, means scaffold for the length of the job, and the work at height rules set what that has to be. A low front wall needs none.

Spalled bricks. Each brick cut out and replaced is counted.

Ask anyone else how deep they rake, whether by hand or disc, what mix they use and why, how many bricks are allowed for, and whether the scaffold is in the price.

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 Sandford 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.

For a start, 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. Where people go wrong is the mix. 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.

Sandford is 11.7 miles from where we are based in Boscombe. We repoint across the village, Holton Heath, Wareham, Stoborough, Lytchett Minster and out towards Bere Regis, all under Dorset Council. Look us up on Companies House as Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Sandford, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

The firm is Thomas Hannen's, and he comes out, looks at the joints and does the pricing personally. A verified Checkatrade reviewer marked us 10 out of 10. Neither the site visit nor the written quote, set out line by line, costs you anything.

Most repairs in Sandford need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.