Repointing in Upton
Hand raking and repointing on Upton estate brickwork and on the older solid walls along the main road, each in the mortar it was built with.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Repointing in Upton
Lime walls and cavity walls, a few hundred metres apart
Your joints are due when they have eroded back behind the brick, crumble under a key, or let damp in round the chimney. Upton has two sorts of wall within a few hundred metres and they want opposite mortars: the older properties along the main road need a soft, breathable lime raked in by hand, the estates behind them a cement gauge. A wall that has cracked through the bricks needs rebuilding.
Most brickwork here is estate brickwork from the late 1960s and 1970s. People notice joints worn back on the exposed elevation, a stack shedding mortar into the gutter, or a boundary wall gone crumbling after a hard winter. Terraces and bungalows are about half the homes in Upton, so much of it is long low runs of wall and shared gables.
The rest is the older fabric. A handful of period cottages and farm buildings, mostly pre-1919 and some of them listed, where the wrong mortar does real damage rather than just looking wrong.
We work out which of the two you own before quoting. The visit and the written itemised quote are free, and we are about eight and a half miles away.
The work
Estate brickwork, older cottages, and the joints on both
The estate walls. Cavity construction in stretcher bond with a cement gauge mortar, and what happens to those is erosion rather than cracking. They are raked by hand to about twice the joint width.
A disc cutter widens the joint and takes the arris off either side, and on a long uniform elevation that damage shows from the pavement. Joints are brushed out and damped down, then filled with a cement, lime and sand gauge matched for strength, colour and texture, with a trial panel on a quiet wall first.
The solid wall properties. Pre-1919 brick, laid in lime, no cavity, and designed to dry out through the joint. Those get an NHL lime or a lime putty mortar gauged with a matched sand, raked by hand only, worked in decent weather and protected while it cures. Where somebody has already pointed one of these in cement, the giveaway is a hard joint standing proud of a spalling brick face, and the repair is to take the cement back out.
Brick faces. Frost lifts the fired face off a brick once the mortar around it has stopped doing its job. Those are cut out and replaced with a match, or turned where the back is sound. Filling a spalled face with mortar shows within a season, and it is one reason cheap pointing looks worse than what it replaced.
Joint profile. Most of the Upton estate stock is bucket handle. Weather struck sheds better on the exposed side. Recessed holds water and belongs on a hard modern brick under shelter, if anywhere. The older frontages are usually flush, or close to it, with the brick edge showing. We keep what is there on anything you look at from the road.
Stacks, terraces and boundary walls. A chimney is the most weathered masonry on an Upton house and sits above the flashings, so an open joint there goes into the roof rather than the wall. On a terrace the stack is often shared, so we settle who owns what before anything is booked. Boundary and retaining walls take water on the top and both faces and are usually the friable ones. A stack wants a scaffold, a bungalow elevation comes off a tower, a garden wall neither. Around one home in nine here is a flat, whose outside walls belong to the block, so we price whole elevations for the freeholder.
How it runs
Repointing a BH16 elevation, joint by joint
Thomas comes out, looks closely at the joints and the brick, and writes the price himself. Most of Upton is post-war brick in a cement-based mortar, but the small number of pre-1919 houses were built with lime, and the mix has to follow the wall.
The quote lists access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, any bricks to replace and disposal on separate lines.
Raking out makes dust, so windows are sheeted, vents covered and the neighbours warned before we start. Where a terrace shares a chimney stack, we agree the access with next door. Nothing is left raked and open overnight, the ground is swept daily and the waste goes with us. If a spalled brick or a failed lintel turns up, you see a photograph and a price before we go further.
Like for like repointing needs no planning permission and nothing from building control. Upton has no conservation area of its own; the nearest, at Lytchett Minster, is in the same parish but outside the village. At a listed address a change of mortar or joint finish needs listed building consent first, and we check before we quote.
Cost
Pricing a repoint: the joints first, the area second
No square metre rate from us. Until someone has looked closely at the joints, the size of the wall tells you very little.
Setting up. A terrace with a shared stack, a bungalow worked from a tower, and a detached house behind a long front wall are three different set ups before a joint is touched. The work at height rules are why access has its own line.
Depth and method. Raking out by hand is slow, but on a soft brick it is the only safe method. A disc widens the joint and knocks the arris off. How deep the joints come back, and how many faces have spalled, set the hours.
The right mix. On the sixties and seventies brick that makes up most of Upton, a sand and cement mortar is normal. On a pre-1919 wall a strong cement mix traps water behind the face and the brick blows in the first hard frost, so lime is the choice there. Matching the colour of weathered joints takes a trial patch.
What the cracks say. Joints that have opened in a stepped line on this shrink-swell ground are worth reading before anyone fills them.
Ask other quotes how deep and by what tool, which mix, how many bricks come out, and whether the scaffold is in.
If water is getting in
Rain getting through open joints
Ring instead of filling in the form. Washed-out joints let wind-driven rain straight through, and on a chimney the water finds the flashings too. On a cavity wall it tends to show as a damp patch at a window reveal, and on an older solid wall as penetrating damp across the inside face.
We come, sheet or temporarily point the worst of it, and price the elevation once it has dried enough to show what is sound. The weather side and any shared stack are where to look first. Scheduled pointing runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm; with water coming in, phone, and a missed call gets a ring back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Lime or cement in Upton, and how to tell them apart
Upton is mostly post-war. Around half of it went up between the war and the early 1980s, with the biggest single run at the turn of the 1970s, and only about one home in twenty-five predates 1919. That small older share is not spread evenly. It sits along the old road and in the pockets that were here before the estates arrived, with a few listed entries among it.
Which means the standard advice about repointing is right for a minority of Upton addresses and wrong for most. Lime on a 1970s cavity wall is softer than the brick, washes out, and has to be done again. Cement on a pre-1919 solid wall closes the route the wall dries through, so the damp leaves by the brick face and takes the face with it. Same village, opposite answers.
So the first question on a visit in Upton is not which mortar you would like, but what the wall actually is. How old, whether there is a cavity behind it, what came out of the joint, and whether anyone has pointed it before. Ten minutes, and it decides everything that follows.
The two want different weather as well as different mortar. Cement gauge work on an estate elevation can be done through most of the year, while lime on an old frontage wants a mild spell and protection while it cures. Some of each on your list usually means two visits in two seasons rather than one job in a fortnight.
Who you are dealing with
Your repointing, priced by Thomas Hannen
Thomas Hannen owns Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and he prices every repointing job himself. The base is at 80a Wolverton Road, Boscombe, 8.5 miles from Upton. From there we cover Upton, Lytchett Minster, Hamworthy, Creekmoor, Corfe Mullen and across into Poole. Before you book a visit in Upton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Upton is under Dorset Council, and the Poole side is BCP Council. On Checkatrade, a verified customer has scored us 10 out of 10. Both the visit and the itemised written quote are free.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Upton?
Most repairs in Upton 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.
| Question | In Upton |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Upton. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Upton, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Upton. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Upton. |
Questions
Questions about repointing in Upton
Ours is an older cottage with a modern extension. Is that one job or two?
One quote. After one free site visit you get a single written quote, with the cottage walls raked out and repointed in lime and the extension in a cement gauge matched to it. Each is priced as its own line, so you can see what the older walls cost apart from the newer brick.
Somebody pointed ours in cement years ago. Does it have to come out?
Only if it is doing harm. On a cavity wall a cement gauge is what belongs there, so leave it. On a pre-1919 solid wall, if the faces are spalling and the joints stand proud, the cement is the cause and taking it out by hand is the repair. If the brick is still sound, there is a case for watching it, and we will say so.
Is Upton in a conservation area?
Not itself: the nearest boundary is the Lytchett Minster conservation area along the road, and there are a handful of listed entries in Upton. For most addresses the mortar is a technical choice with nothing to apply for, but on the older properties by the main road it is worth checking first.
Can you point a shared chimney stack without the neighbour?
We would rather not. A stack on a party wall is usually shared, the scaffold serves both halves, and pointing one side is a poor use of an expensive platform. We will survey and price it so the two of you can split it, which works out better than doing it twice.
How long does lime take to go off?
Weeks rather than days, and that shapes the programme. It is kept damp, covered and protected while it cures, and it will not be rushed with a heater or a stronger mix. Cement gauge work on the estates is far quicker, which is one reason the two kinds of wall here get priced so differently.
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Repointing near Upton
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Repointing guides
Lime or cement mortar: which do you need? Reading a repointing quote: rake out Listed building consent for repointing and re-renderingEverything we do in Hamworthy Repointing, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Find out which wall you have before you buy a mix
A free site visit, ten minutes to settle whether it is lime or cement, and an itemised written quote with the mortar named.