Repointing walls in Woodlands and Netley Marsh

The low courses, and what belongs in them. This is where most of the work is out here. A wall standing in ground that stays damp is drawing water up through its bottom courses all year, and whatever salts come with it crystallise as the wall dries and break the mortar and the brick faces apart from the inside. The joints at the bottom of the wall are the route that water leaves by, so they get pointed in an open, absorbent mix that is deliberately weaker than anything higher up. Sealing that band with a dense mortar or a waterproofer does not stop the damp, it moves it, and it usually reappears a metre higher as penetrating damp on the inside face, where the wall is harder to repair.

Weathered elevations on post-war walls. Getting on for half the housing here went up between 1945 and the early eighties, the busiest stretch of it in the late fifties and early sixties. That is cavity work with a fired brick outer skin, and the joints on it pit and open at the arris rather than washing out, with the perpends going before the bed joints. Those get a matched cement and sand mortar gauged to sit under the strength of the brick, raked back by hand to sound material at a depth of about twice the joint width, never with an angle grinder, and struck to the profile the wall already carries, usually weather struck or bucket handle rather than flush or recessed. The joints are damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up.

Older solid walls, in lime. Close to a fifth of the property here predates 1919, and there is a similar amount of inter-war building alongside it. A pre-1919 wall has no cavity, sheds water by evaporating it back out through the joint and has to stay breathable, so it gets an NHL, a natural hydraulic lime, with a sand matched to the period original, hand raked to about twice the joint width, damped down, filled in lifts and protected while it cures. Nothing ruins one of those walls faster than a hard cement repoint, and undoing that is a fair share of what we are asked to do.

Spalled faces and blown plinths. Where a face has blown we cut the brick out whole and replace or turn it against a sample held on the wall, with a trial panel for you to look at in daylight where the match matters, judged on how it will read with a few years of weathering on it rather than on the day it goes up. Spalling like that is the end of a long process rather than a sudden fault. Out here the damage gathers in the same places every time: the courses just above ground level, under a sill, beside a downpipe, and along the bottom of anything with a path or a gravel bed laid up tight against it.

Boundary walls and copings under the trees. Plots here are large and the dividing walls are long, old and sitting on very little. They take weather on both sides, they stand in leaf litter that holds damp against the brick, and a wall whose coping has gone loose fills with water through the top. Repointing the top courses and getting the coping rebedded so it throws rain clear is the repair that stops the rest of it.

Stacks. A stack stands in clear air with weather on four sides and nothing warming it from inside, so it carries the tiredest mortar on the house. Repointing above the flashing, cutting out perished brick and renewing the flaunching round the pots is usually all it needs. It is work at height, so the platform, tower or scaffold, is its own line on 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 detached house set well back on its own plot, a bungalow whose gable is also the boundary and a long garden wall running down through the trees are three different set ups before a 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.

Part of this village sits in flood zone 2 and the nearest watercourse runs about forty metres from the housing, which most people already know. What it means for mortar is less obvious. A wall does not have to flood to be affected by ground that stays wet. It only has to stand in it. Water rises through the bottom courses by capillary action, brings dissolved salts with it, and then evaporates off the face, leaving those salts crystallising in the pores of the brick and in the mortar joint. That crystal growth is what breaks the material apart, and it is why the damage on walls out here starts low and works up rather than starting at the stack. the national flood map will show you the position for a given address.

The decision it changes is what goes into the bottom metre of the wall. The instinct is to point the worst looking part hardest, and on a wall standing in wet ground that is precisely wrong. A dense joint at low level stops the water leaving where it is doing least harm and pushes it higher, where the brickwork is drier, more brittle and more visible. So the low courses get a softer, more open mortar than the rest of the elevation, and they are treated as a sacrificial band that will be renewed again one day rather than as something to be sealed permanently. Ask anyone quoting whether they intend to use the same mix top to bottom, and if they do, ask why. We also look at what is standing against the wall outside, because a raised bed, a gravel path or a downpipe emptying beside a plinth will undo the pointing whatever mix goes into it.

We cover Woodlands, Netley Marsh, Ashurst and the SO40 edge of the forest, out through Bartley and Cadnam, 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.