Most brickwork problems on a Birmingham house are not emergencies, but they do get more expensive the longer they are left. The trouble is telling the difference between a wall that looks tired and a wall that is actually letting water in. This guide covers what goes wrong locally, what the honest fix is, and roughly what it costs.
Stand back from the wall on a dry day, then get close. Four things are worth checking: the face of the bricks, the mortar joints, any cracks, and whether the wall line is still straight.
Crumbling or missing mortar that you can rake out with a screwdriver to more than about 10mm deep needs repointing. Bricks with the face flaked off, exposing the soft pink inside, are spalled and usually need cutting out. A wall that bulges or where courses no longer run level is a different conversation and may need a structural engineer before anyone touches it.
A huge slice of the city's housing is Victorian and Edwardian terraces (Moseley, Kings Heath, Sparkhill, Handsworth) built in soft local red stock brick laid in lime mortar, plus interwar semis (Hall Green, Great Barr, Northfield) with harder bricks and early cement mortars.
The single biggest cause of ruined Victorian brickwork here is not age, it is a previous repoint done in strong sand and cement. Hard cement traps moisture in a soft brick, and when it freezes the brick face blows off instead of the mortar. If you see sharp, grey, proud ribbon pointing next to bricks with their faces missing, that is what happened. The same applies to render and waterproof sealers slapped over old brick.
Chimney stacks and parapets take the worst of it because they are wet on all sides. On a lot of terraces the stack is the first thing to need attention, often decades before the rest of the elevation.
Repointing means raking out the old joint to roughly twice its width in depth and filling it with a fresh mix. On a pre-1919 house that mix should normally be lime based, typically a natural hydraulic lime such as NHL 2 or 3.5 with a sharp sand, matched to the original colour. On a 1930s or later house a weak cement and lime gauged mix is usually appropriate. Anyone who quotes the same mix for every house is not paying attention.
Individual spalled or frost-damaged bricks are cut out and replaced. Matching matters more than most people expect, and reclaimed Birmingham and Black Country stock from a local yard normally beats anything new. Turning a damaged brick round to hide the face is a shortcut that fails again in a few years.
Where a section has moved, is delaminating, or the wall tie corrosion has pushed courses apart, the honest answer is taking that area down and rebuilding it, or fitting remedial wall ties. Patching over movement just hides it.
Prices vary a lot by access and condition, so treat these as ballpark rather than quotes. Repointing tends to land somewhere around £45 to £90 per square metre, with lime work at the higher end because it is slower and weather dependent. Cutting out and replacing individual bricks is often quoted per brick, commonly in the £25 to £60 range once you factor in sourcing a match.
Access is frequently the biggest single line. Scaffolding a two storey rear elevation or a chimney stack can add several hundred to well over a thousand pounds, which is why it is worth bundling repointing, stack repairs and any roofline work into one visit rather than paying for scaffold twice.
Season matters too. Lime mortar should not be worked in frost, so late autumn and winter jobs may need protection or a delay into spring.
Ask for the mortar mix in writing, ask to see a sample panel of about a square metre before the whole elevation is done, and ask what happens to the raked out joints if the mortar contains anything unexpected. Be wary of anyone cold calling about your chimney or offering to seal your walls.
If you are in one of Birmingham's conservation areas, such as parts of Moseley, Edgbaston, Handsworth or the Jewellery Quarter, or the property is listed, check with Birmingham City Council before work starts. Repointing in a like for like mortar is often fine, but changing the appearance of a frontage may not be.
A correctly specified and properly executed repoint should give you 50 years or more on a sheltered elevation, and typically 25 to 40 on an exposed one. Jobs that fail within five years almost always failed because the mortar was too strong or the joints were not raked deep enough.
Cement based repairs can carry on in most conditions above about 3 degrees and rising, but lime mortar needs protection from frost for several weeks after it goes on. For a Victorian property it is usually better to wait for spring than to rush it under sheeting.
For most Birmingham homes, like for like repairs need no permission. If your property is listed or in a conservation area with an Article 4 direction, check with the council first, as changing the mortar appearance or the brick type can require consent.
Tell us a few details about what you're planning. We'll come back within 24 hours, usually the same day, and get a site visit booked in for the week.
Most jobs start with a 5-minute call so we can work out if we're the right fit and when we could realistically get on site. No hard sell.