Mortar repairs and repointing in Spetisbury

Spetisbury's lime-built cottages and sixties houses show wear in much the same small ways. Sand on a path under a wall. A joint you can push a finger into. A brick face lifting off in a thin plate near a downpipe. Or a patch on an inside wall that comes and goes with the weather.

All of those are the mortar, not the wall, and none needs anything taken down. What they need is a look at which joints have gone, how far back, and what should replace them, because in Spetisbury the answer is not the same from one property to the next. We survey every elevation, scrape a few joints so we are talking about depth rather than appearance, photograph what we find and send it back priced elevation by elevation. The visit and the written itemised quote are free.

Solid wall is pointed in lime. Some homes in Spetisbury predate 1919, and those walls have no cavity behind the brick. They handle water by letting it evaporate back out through the joint, which works only while the mortar stays softer and more permeable than the brick.

We rake those out by hand to twice the joint width, never with a disc, and point back in an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged to the original sand for colour and texture. The profile goes back to what the wall carries, usually flush or slightly recessed rather than the weather struck finish on later work.

Cement pointing on an old wall, coming back off. Plenty of the older property in Spetisbury was repointed at some stage in sand and cement, because for thirty years that was what everybody used. On a soft brick it does real harm: the joint will not let moisture out, so it leaves through the brick face instead and the first hard frost lifts that face away. It is the wall people misread most often, the joints looking sound while the bricks fall apart.

The late sixties and seventies stock. Much of the housing in Spetisbury went up between 1945 and 1982, a lot of it in the late sixties and early seventies. That is cavity work, a fired brick outer skin in cement and sand mortar struck weather or bucket handle, and it fails differently again: the joint pits and opens at the arris rather than washing out, water stands in the pit, and frost takes the surface off the brick in flakes. Matching mortar of that age means matching the sand and the gauge, so we take a sample from a sheltered spot and put up a trial panel to look at in daylight before the elevation is committed.

Spalled faces. Where a face has 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, which leaves a patch that never matches and drops out within a couple of winters.

Terraces, semis and shared work. Many homes in Spetisbury are terraced or semi detached, so an elevation often runs across more than one address and a stack is often shared. Where that is so, agree the mix and the joint profile with the neighbour before anything starts: a repointed half and an unpointed half meeting in the middle of a terrace is a line nobody can unsee.

What we would talk you out of: opening joints in late autumn on an exposed wall. Neither lime nor cement wants a hard frost before it has cured, and a joint raked out and left is worse than one left alone. We would rather survey and price now, and book the work for settled weather.

Before any price, Thomas walks every elevation, digs a key into the old joints to see how far back they have gone and whether they are lime or cement, and listens for bricks that sound hollow when tapped. His written quote has separate lines for access, raking out, the new mix, the area of each wall, replacement bricks and taking the waste away.

The mortar in Spetisbury depends on when the wall went up. The older cottages on the main road were built in lime and should be pointed back in lime, which is slower and needs shielding from frost and hot sun while it goes off. The sixties and seventies houses were laid in cement mortar, and on those the work is usually a weathered gable or a chimney stack. We rake the joints out by hand, or with a careful tool, so the arrises of the bricks survive. Dust sheets go down, windows are masked, and the site is cleared each afternoon. Should a brick crumble as its joint is opened, Thomas shows you and prices a replacement first.

Repointing in the same mortar is a repair, so planning does not come into it, and the village has no conservation area. On one of the listed entries in Spetisbury the mortar is protected fabric, so a change of mix or joint profile needs listed building consent from Dorset Council. We check the address before anyone starts.

If rain is getting through a wall, move furniture away from the damp patch and let the room air. A wall with the joints washed out lets driven rain soak to the inside, and on a chimney it can get behind the lead flashing as well.

On the first visit we look at the whole elevation, fill or sheet the worst joints so the wall stops taking water, and price the proper repointing once it has dried enough to judge. Planned work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. We come out from Bournemouth, so a phone call is the quickest way to agree a time, and a missed call gets returned as soon as one of us is free.

Call now: 07435 839745

Spetisbury's housing is not all one age. Some of it is pre-1919 solid brickwork built in lime, and much of it went up between the mid sixties and the early eighties as cavity work in cement and sand. They want opposite things from a mortar.

The old walls need a mix soft and open enough to let water back out through the joint. The newer walls need one matched to a mortar that already has cement in it, and lime putty in a wall like that achieves nothing except a joint that erodes early.

Where it catches people is the property that is both. An older cottage with a seventies extension on the back, or a converted outbuilding tied onto a modern skin, is two walls with one address and should not be quoted as one mix. Ask whoever prices your job to write down what goes on each part of the building, not just on the job as a whole. A single mortar across a property that is not all one age means something has been skipped. We sample each wall separately and say so on the quote.

Nearby places we also cover for repointing, with straight-line distances from Spetisbury, and the other trades we offer in Spetisbury itself.

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