When Does Brickwork Need Repointing?

Brickwork needs repointing when the mortar joints have worn back, gone soft or started to disappear, not when a wall reaches a particular age. A wall built forty years ago with joints still hard and sitting flush needs nothing doing to it. A wall built fifteen years ago in an exposed spot can already be ready. What matters is the state of the mortar in front of you, not the date it went up.

Mortar is built to give way before the brick does. It sits slightly softer than the brick either side of it, so the weather works on the joint and leaves the brick alone. That is the joint doing its job. The trouble starts once there is not enough of it left to do that job. Once a joint has eroded back behind the face of the brick, or gone soft enough to rake out with a fingernail, rain stops running off the wall and starts sitting in it.

That is why the honest answer to 'when' is: before a winter rather than after one. Water sitting in an open joint freezes, and frost is what turns a tired joint into a damaged wall. It lifts the face clean off the brick. Once a brick face has blown like that, repointing on its own will not put it back. The brick has to be cut out and replaced with a matching one, which is a bigger job than a patch of pointing.

Just as often, the answer is that nothing needs doing yet. A few hairline gaps, some staining, a patch of green on a north-facing wall. None of that on its own means the pointing has failed. We would rather walk a wall and say it can wait a couple of years than start a job it doesn't need. It is also normal for one elevation to need attention while the other three are fine. Weather does not hit a house evenly: a gable end, a chimney stack and the low courses near ground level tend to go first.

That leads to the question most homeowners actually arrive with: does the whole house have to be done at once? Usually not. Repointing is carried out where it is needed, and matching new mortar to old across a patch is a normal part of the job, not a compromise on it. Tackling one elevation at a time, worst first, is a sensible way to handle a house. What we would not do is point over mortar that has already failed underneath, which can look fine for a couple of years before it falls away in sheets.

Scope matters too. Lime mortar and heritage repointing on a listed or period property is a specialism in its own right, and it is not work we take on. If that is what your house needs, you want a specialist who does it every day rather than someone learning it on your wall. Everything else on this page, from a patch of pointing on a garden wall to a full patio, is work we carry out regularly across Dorset and into Hampshire.