Repointing in Sandleheath, old walls and soft mortar

Telling an old wall from a later one. The bond, the brick, the joint width and the window reveal give it away, and none of them needs a ladder. The bond: an older solid wall usually shows headers as well as stretchers in the pattern, a cavity wall shows stretchers only.

The brick: handmade brick is uneven in size and colour with a soft arris, later brick is regular and hard. The joint width: old joints are wide and often flush or recessed, later ones are narrow and weather struck or bucket handle. And the reveal: on a solid wall the window sits close to the outside face. We check each of them and tell you which you have before we say a word about mix.

Solid walls, in lime. Where a Sandleheath wall turns out to be solid there is no cavity behind the brick, and the only way it sheds water is by soaking it up and letting it evaporate back out through the joint. It has to stay breathable, so the mortar must be softer and more open than the brick. Joints come out by hand to roughly twice their width, no angle grinder, and go back in an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to the original sand for colour and grain. They are damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up, and the profile goes back to what the wall already carries.

Hard pointing on a soft wall, and taking it off. This is the commonest fault on the older walls here. A cement joint on a period brick stops the wall drying through the mortar, so the water goes out through the brick faces instead and frost takes them off. The tell is joints standing proud and hard with hollowed bricks between them, and there is good published work behind it in the research on lime and cement in traditional mortars. It comes out joint by joint with hand tools, because the cement is often stronger than the brick it is bonded to, and it shows as its own line on the quote because it is slower than pointing a wall nobody has touched.

Post-war cavity brickwork. Close to four homes in ten in Sandleheath went up between 1945 and 1982, and that is a single outer skin of fired brick in a cement and sand mortar. It fails at the arris rather than washing out: the joint pits, water starts to stand in it, and a hard frost lifts the face off the brick. Matching means matching the sand and the gauge as well as the colour, and a trial panel goes up somewhere discreet for you to look at in daylight, judged on how it will read weathered rather than fresh.

Blown faces. Where a brick face has gone 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. On a Sandleheath wall frost damage collects in the same places every time: under sills, beside downpipes, at the corners of a bay and in the courses just above the damp proof course where a drive or a border has been laid up against the house.

Stacks, low walls and outbuildings. A Sandleheath chimney weathers on four sides with nothing warming it from inside, so its joints go friable long before the house walls, and sand in the gutter is usually the first sign. Freestanding walls take weather on two faces and along the top, and the coping is nearly always what has failed. Both are quick work caught early. The stack is work at height and wants a scaffold, not a tower, which is why it is worth doing everything up there in one visit.

We never price by the square metre, because the joints decide it, not the size of the wall. The mix. On pre-1900 soft brick the mortar has to be weaker than the brick, which means lime. Cement pointing traps water in the brick, and the face blows off in a hard frost. Lime is slower to mix, lay and cure, and it cannot go on in cold weather, so it takes longer.

Depth. How far the joints have washed out, and how many faces have already spalled, sets the hours. Raking out by hand to a proper depth is slow.

Old cement to remove. Where a cottage was repointed in cement years ago, that has to come out carefully without damaging the brick edges. It is often the slowest part of the job.

Access. A low wall along the road needs no platform. A gable on a post-war semi can come off a tower. A stack needs a scaffold, and the work at height rules make that its own line.

When comparing quotes, ask how deep the joints will be raked and by what method, what mix is going in, and whether the scaffold is included.

We repoint in Sandleheath, Fordingbridge, Alderholt, Damerham and the lanes along this side of the Avon valley, broadly SP6. New Forest District Council is the authority. Sandleheath is 14 miles from Wolverton Road, Boscombe, where we are based.

The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns it, and he scrapes the joints and prices each elevation in person. One verified customer on Checkatrade scored us 10 out of 10. There is no charge for the survey or for the written quote with each item listed. Before you book a visit in Sandleheath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Sandleheath 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.