Repointing and brick face repairs in Wool

Postwar cavity brickwork is the main stock. Most of the housing in Wool is a single outer skin of fired brick in cement and sand, struck weather struck or bucket handle. It does not wash out the way an old lime joint does: it pits and erodes back at the arris, water stands in the hollow that leaves, and one hard frost lifts the surface off in flakes.

On a Wool house the repair is to rake back to sound material, roughly twice the joint width, with the angle grinder left in the van because a disc cutter takes the arris off. The joints are damped down and brushed out before filling, and the mix is matched to the original for sand, gauge, colour and texture rather than colour alone. Plenty of mortar from that period had lime in it as well as cement, and matching that gauge is the difference between a joint that lasts and one that outlives the brick.

The older end of the village. A smaller share of Wool predates 1919 and is solid wall, one thickness with no cavity, sometimes brick and sometimes rubble stone with brick dressings. Those walls stay breathable by drying through the joint, so they get an NHL lime or lime putty matched to the original sand, as a Victorian or Edwardian wall anywhere would, and BS EN 459 is the standard the binder is bought against. Nothing shortens the life of one faster than hard cement pointing, and where that has been done we take it back out by hand.

Spalled faces, cut out and not filled. Filling a blown face with mortar leaves a dark patch that never matches and drops out in a couple of winters. We cut the brick out whole and turn it where the back is sound, or replace it against a sample held on the wall. On this stock the damage gathers just above the damp proof course where rain splashes back off a path, and under sills and beside downpipes.

Stacks, and the joints nobody can see. A chimney in Wool has weather on four sides and nothing warming it from inside, so its mortar goes friable and washes out long before the house walls need anything. That is the failure that costs the most, because open joints on a stack put water into the roof space and it comes out as a stain on a ceiling. It wants a scaffold, not a tower, so everything up there is worth doing in one visit.

Garden and boundary walls. Freestanding walls in Wool take weather on both faces and have no roof over them, so they fail from the top down. A lifted coping or an open bed joint lets the wall fill from above and the faces start letting go. Rebedding the top and repointing the first few courses is quick work next to a rebuild.

The finish, and matching it. The profile goes back as the wall carries it, which on Wool stock is usually bucket handle or weather struck rather than the fine flush or slightly recessed joints of older property. We make up a trial panel on a discreet part of the wall for you to look at in daylight.

The one job we turn down is pointing over movement. Cracking that steps along the joints every few courses is a footing or a corroded tie talking, not tired mortar, and filling it hides that for a season.

The area of wall on its own tells you almost nothing until the joints have been looked at. Reaching it. A seventies semi with a gable that takes all the weather needs a scaffold. A bungalow comes off a tower or the ground. A garden wall needs no platform. The work at height rules set the access, and it is priced as its own line.

Depth and damage. How far the joints have to be raked back, and whether the brick faces have already spalled, decide the hours. The south west facing walls in Wool take the driving rain, and that is where joints wash out first.

The mortar. Estate brick takes a cement-based mix. Pre-1919 walls in the old village of Wool want lime, which is slower to work and slower to cure. A mix too strong for soft brick traps water, and frost then takes the face off.

Bricks to replace. Each spalled brick cut out and replaced, with a match found for colour, adds time.

Chimneys. A stack with open joints often needs its lead flashings looked at too.

Ask any other quote how deep the joints are raked and whether by hand, what the mix is and how it is matched, how many bricks are replaced, and whether the scaffold is included.

We repoint in Wool, Bovington, East Burton, Winfrith Newburgh, Coombe Keynes and the villages along the Frome, broadly BH20. That is 17.1 miles from our base on Wolverton Road, and Dorset Council covers planning and building control.

You would deal with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, England and Wales company number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen’s firm, and he scrapes out a joint or two and prices the job himself rather than sending a salesman. Checkatrade shows a verified customer’s 10 out of 10. The visit and the written quote are free of charge. Before you book a visit in Wool, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wool 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.