Repointing in Winfrith Newburgh, joint by joint

Hand raking, and why no disc goes near it. Almost everything old in Winfrith Newburgh 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.

On a Winfrith Newburgh wall 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 and not just 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 Winfrith Newburgh's 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 in Winfrith Newburgh were pointed in sand and cement, and that is the fault to put right first. 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 Winfrith Newburgh 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 Winfrith Newburgh 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.

We never price by the square metre, because the area tells you little until somebody has looked at the joints. Access. A front wall on the village street, a long farm range you can reach from a yard, and a low flint and brick wall by a lane each need a different set up. The work at height rules mean the scaffold is priced where you can see it.

How deep and how hard. Washed out lime comes back quickly. Hard cement pointing on soft brick has to be cut out carefully, and that is slow.

Exposure. The south west faces take the driven rain, and the code of practice for assessing wall exposure to wind driven rain is why the mix and the joint finish matter most on those elevations.

Matching. Too strong a mix holds water in soft brick, and the face comes off in a hard frost. Lime is right on most old walls in Winfrith Newburgh, and it is matched to the sand and colour already there.

Spalled brick and flint. Each brick replaced and each flint reset is counted.

Season. Lime work waits for frost free weather, so an early call gets a better slot.

Ask any other quote whether the joints are raked by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it was matched, and whether the scaffold is in.

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 set by the colour of the mortar, which comes out of the sand, and by the profile of the joint. Most quotes talk about colour and say nothing about profile, and profile 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 and not 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.

Winfrith Newburgh is 19.8 miles from our base in Boscombe. We repoint in the village, Wool, West Lulworth, Owermoigne and Crossways, broadly DT2 and BH20, with Dorset Council as the planning authority. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Winfrith Newburgh, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

It is owned by Thomas Hannen, who looks at the joints in person and writes the price. On Checkatrade, a verified customer gave us 10 out of 10. Both the visit and the itemised written quote are free of charge.

Most repairs in Winfrith Newburgh 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.