Thorney Hill repointing inside the National Park

Solid walls that have to breathe. Better than one home in five around Thorney Hill predates 1919, which out here means solid wall: one thickness of brick, no cavity, and a wall that gets rid of water by letting it evaporate out through the joint. That only works while the mortar is softer and more open than the brick. Those joints are raked by hand to roughly twice their width, perpends included, and pointed back in an NHL lime or lime putty mix gauged against a sample of the sound original. The profile goes back as it was, usually flush or a shade recessed rather than weather struck.

Taking cement back off an old wall. Plenty of the older cottages here were repointed in sand and cement at some point in the last fifty years. A dense joint seals the route the wall had for shedding water, so moisture and any salt in it leave through the brick instead and the faces spall while the joints sit there looking sound. Cutting hard mortar out of a soft wall is slow, careful work, and it is the only repair that changes the outcome.

Post-war cavity brickwork. Over four in ten homes here went up between 1945 and 1982 and those are cavity walls, a single outer skin in a cement and sand mortar struck weather or bucket handle. They erode at the arris rather than washing out, and once water stands in the open joint one hard frost takes flakes off the brick either side. Matching that mortar is a question of sand and gauge as much as colour, so a trial panel goes up somewhere discreet for you to judge in daylight.

Detached houses with nothing to hide behind. Close to four in ten properties here stand detached, so all four elevations take the weather and no neighbour's gable shelters any of them. The south west face is a long way ahead of the others and needs pricing separately, and the mortar on that face wants to be a shade more forgiving rather than harder. Instinct says point an exposed wall in something strong. On an old wall that is the fastest way to lose the brick.

Blown faces and stacks. Where a brick face has gone we cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it against a sample held on the wall, because a mortar fill never matches and drops out in two winters. Chimneys go first on any building here, with weather on four sides and nothing warming them from within, and open joints in a stack turn into penetrating damp on a bedroom ceiling. Stacks are work at height and want a scaffold, priced on its own line.

No rate per square metre: the area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at what the joints are actually like.

Getting to it. A brick cottage on the lane, a detached post-war house standing on its own in a plot and a stack on a steep roof are three different set ups, and only the last has no alternative to a scaffold. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is. Access under the work at height rules is a priced line, not absorbed into a rate.

The joints decide it, not the wall. How deep the joints have to come back, and whether the faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does. Hand raking is slow, but a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off.

Matching is the part that shows. Too strong a mix holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first hard frost. Lime is the right answer on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by hand or disc, what the mix is and whether it was matched, how many spalled bricks are being replaced, and whether the scaffold is in the price.

Thorney Hill is inside the New Forest National Park, and the National Park Authority rather than the district council deals with planning here. For a repointing job that matters less than people fear, and in a different way than they expect. Renewing mortar in the same material, colour and profile is maintenance, and maintenance is not something you apply for. What draws attention is a change to how a building reads from the road, and mortar changes that more than almost anything else you can do to a brick wall.

A joint struck proud in a bright modern mix lightens a whole elevation and flattens the shadow lines that give an old wall its texture, and it does that from fifty yards away. So record what is there before it comes out: photograph the joints, keep a piece of the original mortar, and get the mix and the profile written into the quote. On a listed property that record is what the consent is judged against. On any other, it is the difference between a repair nobody notices and one everybody does.

We cover Thorney Hill, Bransgore, Burley, Sopley and across towards Christchurch and Ringwood, broadly BH23, with the New Forest National Park Authority as the planning authority. 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 is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.