Repointing and mortar matching in West Parley

Bungalow brickwork, and why it is a different job. More than a third of the homes in West Parley are bungalows, and a bungalow presents a long, low run of wall with almost all of it inside reach of a tower or trestles.

That takes the biggest single cost out of a quote, since a scaffold is only needed for the stack. It also puts the whole elevation at eye level, so a poor colour match or a sloppy joint profile is on show in a way it never is on a two storey house. We agree the finish first and strike it to whatever is already there, usually bucket handle or weather struck on this stock.

The base of the wall. What these West Parley houses usually need is the bottom four or five courses, where ground levels have crept up over fifty years of patios, block paving and borders. Wet joints go friable, then hollow, then wash out, and the salts carried up with the damp crystallise in the mortar and break it apart. We rake out to about twice the joint width, damp the joints down, fill, and brush the face back once the mix has taken up. Where the ground is bridging the damp proof course we say so, because pointing without dropping that level is a repair with a short life.

Sixties and seventies cavity work. Nearly six in ten homes in West Parley went up between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late sixties and early seventies: fired brick, cavity built, in a cement and sand mortar. Those joints do not wash out the way lime does. They erode at the arris until water stands in them, then frost lifts the mortar and takes brick faces with it, which is the spalling you see under sills and at the corners of a bay. Blown faces are cut out and replaced, never filled, matched on a sample off the wall and a trial panel you look at first.

Stacks, and the little bit of solid wall that is left. A West Parley bungalow chimney is short, squat and exposed on all four sides, with nothing warming it from inside. Its joints go long before the house does, and a stack repoint with the flaunching renewed is a proper access job even on a single storey building. A small number of properties around the older lanes are pre-1919 solid wall rather than cavity, and those want an NHL lime or lime putty mix instead, because a solid wall has to stay breathable. We work out which you have on the visit.

Garden and boundary walls. West Parley front walls, dividing walls between drives and the low walls around a raised patio take weather on both faces with nothing to shelter them. Open coping joints let rain into the core, which then freezes. Repointing the coping and the exposed face, and cutting out the frost damaged bricks, is short work that saves a rebuild.

The size of the wall tells you less than you would think. What is going on in the joints matters more.

Getting to it. A detached bungalow can be done off a tower. A chalet bungalow gable reaching up to the dormer, or a two storey detached house, needs scaffold, and the HSE guidance on roof and height work makes access a line of its own.

Raking out. Hard cement is slow to cut out. Raking by hand protects the brick; a disc is faster but widens the joint and chips the arris, the sharp edge of the brick. How deep we go, and how many faces have already spalled, sets the hours.

The mix. Most walls in West Parley are hard post-war brick that takes a cement-based mortar well. The small number of pre-1919 buildings in the parish have softer brick, and a strong cement mix on them traps water and blows the faces off in frost. Those want lime. Colour matters too, so we match a sample first.

Ask any other quote how deep they will rake out and with what, what mix they will use, how many spalled bricks are included, and whether the scaffold is priced in.

West Parley sits on low ground on the north side of the Stour, and although the housing is not in the river flood zones, surface water risk across the area is rated high. Check your own address on the government flood risk service. In practical terms that means water sits on the surface after heavy rain rather than draining away quickly, and where it sits is against the bottom of your walls.

What that changes is the mix at low level, not just the timing. The temptation on a wall that keeps going soft at the base is to point it in the hardest mortar available. That traps moisture in the brick and pushes the damage upward: the water and the dissolved salts leave through the faces above and blow them off. On a wall with wet ground against it we point the plinth in a slightly softer mix than the brick, do not seal it, and tell you where the water is coming from first. Often the useful money goes on lowering a bed, cutting a gravel margin or fixing a gully rather than on mortar at all, and we would rather say that on a free visit than take the job twice.

West Parley is about 4.5 miles from our base in Boscombe. We repoint across the parish, Parley Cross, Dudsbury, Longham, Ferndown and the rest of BH22, and Dorset Council is the local authority. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Before you book a visit in West Parley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen runs it, and he scratches out the test joints and prices the work himself. Checkatrade shows a score of 10 out of 10 from a verified customer. There is no charge for coming out and none for the written quote, which lists every item.

Most repairs in West Parley 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.