Mortar repairs and repointing in Spetisbury

Most calls out to Spetisbury start with something small. 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 rather than 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 this village 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 in lime. One home in five here predates 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 here 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. Half the housing here went up between 1945 and 1982, the busiest years being 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. More than half the homes here 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.

Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting. The quote is itemised: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open overnight, the site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. Anything nobody could have foreseen gets a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Repointing like for like is repair rather than development, so there is no planning application and nothing for building control to sign off. Spetisbury has no conservation area of its own, and eighteen listed entries in the village and the country around it. On a listed building the mortar is protected fabric, so a change of mix, colour or joint profile needs listed building consent before a joint is opened. Dorset Council holds the list, and we check an address before a mixer is filled.

Ring rather than use the form. A wall with the joints washed out lets driven rain straight through to the inside face, and on a chimney it finds the flashings too. We come and look, sheet or temporarily point the worst of it, and price the full elevation once it has dried enough to see what is sound. Out here it is most often a west facing gable or the chimney, and since we come out of Bournemouth rather than round the corner, ringing gets a straight answer on timing quicker than a form does. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

Spetisbury is split almost evenly between two kinds of wall. About a fifth is pre-1919 solid brickwork built in lime, and about half 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 rather than on the job. 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.

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