Repointing in Winfrith Newburgh, joint by joint

Hand raking, and why no disc goes near it. Almost everything old here is solid wall with no cavity, built in lime mortar and meant to shed water back out through the joint rather than hold it out at the face. We rake those joints with a plugging chisel and a hacking iron, back to sound material and roughly twice the width of the joint. The arris of a handmade brick is not straight, so an angle grinder or disc cutter widens the joint permanently and takes the edge off the brick. That damage does not grow back.

The mix, matched rather than chosen. Colour in a mortar comes from the sand, not the binder, so we take a sample of sound original from a sheltered joint, break it down and mix against it. On pre-1919 fabric that means a natural hydraulic lime or lime putty gauged softer than the brick, so the mortar stays the sacrificial part of the wall. A trial panel goes up on a discreet elevation and dries before anybody approves it, because wet mortar reads darker than it will finish. Joints are damped down, filled and brushed back once the mix has taken up.

Cement coming back out. A good many walls here were pointed in sand and cement, and that is the commonest fault we undo. A hard joint stops the wall drying through the mortar, so moisture leaves through the brick face instead and a frost lifts the face off. The tell is pointing standing proud and sound while the brick between it is eaten away. Getting it out is slow hand work and the only thing that fixes the cause.

Spalled faces and flint bedding. Where a face has blown we cut the brick out whole and turn or replace it from reclaimed stock, rather than filling the hollow with mortar, which never matches and drops out. Where a wall is flint banded with brick, the joint is set back at the face of the flints so the stones read as stones.

Stacks, and the thatch under them. A stack takes weather on four sides with nothing warming it from inside, so its joints go friable years ahead of the house, and the flaunching around the pots cracks after them. That is work at height off a platform. Where the roof below is thatched, the access and the sheeting are agreed with you and with the thatcher before the quote.

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

Getting to it. A thatched cottage tight against the village street, a farm range with a yard you can back into, and a low flint and brick wall on a lane are three different set ups before a single joint is opened. The work at height rules are why the scaffold is a priced line rather than something 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.

Matching is the part that shows. Too strong a mix is the classic mistake, and one hard frost takes the face off soft brick. Lime is right on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it has been matched, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

A conservation area does not stop you repairing anything. It controls how the building looks when you have finished, and on a repoint the look is two things: the colour of the mortar, which comes out of the sand, and the profile of the joint. Most quotes talk about the first and say nothing about the second, and the second is what changes an elevation.

The historic finish on this fabric is flush, or a shade recessed so each brick and each flint reads as its own shape with a shadow line round it. What tends to go back instead is a weather struck joint cut off at an angle, or a ribbon of mortar smeared proud of the face. Both turn a soft, irregular old wall into a hard grid seen from thirty yards down the road, and a proud joint sheds water onto the brick below rather than off it.

So get the sand, the mix and the joint profile written into the quote rather than left to preference on the day. We put all three in ours, and where an address is listed we agree the specification before any scaffold is booked.

We cover Winfrith Newburgh, Wool, West Lulworth, Owermoigne and Crossways, broadly DT2 and BH20, with Dorset Council 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.