Thinking about doing some guttering and drainage improvements around my house

[danlightbulb]

You are getting it ALL done and repointed for a grand?

Not repointing the entire wall no but replacing bricks in the corner and repointing that area, and replacing bricks where the pipes have been put through, and bricking up the window. He has allowed 3 days work plus materials so I guess it will be however much he can get done in 3 days which for a proper brickie should be quite a bit?

The repointing needs doing on the whole house but once this corner is repaired then there is less urgency and I can work on it a bit at a time.

Someone else is coming to quote tomorrow so I'll get a comparison price and other opinion on scope then.

 

[danlightbulb]

You could get a small room plastered for that.

Sorry I'm not sure the relevance? Are you suggesting a grand for that repair work is overpriced?

 

[danlightbulb]

Have you considered just getting a brick repointing quote with a few repairs thrown in? :S

Surely any decent brickie/tradesperson is going to be asking £2-300 a day?

I'll see what tomorrow's visit suggests.

 

[danlightbulb]

Why are you all so against me doing the job properly?

If you were buying this house and saw this I think you'd be trying to knock at least a couple grand off asking price for this potential repair work.

Old houses will need external brick repair eventually Im struggling to understand why you're against trying to do a professional job of it.

 

[danlightbulb]

Yeah but tbh any decent brickie will be super quick. 3 days is a long time for what they've quoted.

Ok I'll see what the second guy says then.

3 days didn't seem unreasonable to me, a day to replace bad bricks especially on the corner, a day repointing the area (I guess 3-4 SQM) and then a day bricking up the window.

 

[danlightbulb]

Not against it but you are going arse about face. If the brickie repairs the bits, you still need pointing and you haven't solved your gash drainage issues. The ground is still too high vs. air brick etc etc

Yeah that's true but I'm trying to focus on the more urgent work first (i.e the structural strength of the wall itself) because I can't drop several grand getting someone to repair, repoint the whole wall and rectify the drainage all in one go.

Do you have another suggestion for how I fix everything in one hit or change the order of what I'm doing? I'm not a builder I don't know.

 

[danlightbulb]

Re the airbricks, have you actually looked to see in heavy rain if water is pooling outside them and getting in to them? i.e. do you know that they are actually causing a problem?

If water ingress is an issue, and you want to save money, I would imagine there is a solution where you could block/cover off say the bottom two rows of holes in them, making them watertight, so you could withstand a higher pooling depth, but still have some ventilation.

I guess it depends on how much money you have to spend.

I don't think water is pooling no, although I can't be sure on the ones that are below the level of the block paving out front. I need to lift the block paving at the front to see what is underneath, but there is an acco drain installed at the level of the paving so if I remove the paving this would then be too high.

The problem with this rear corner that I'm focused on at the moment is because a slab was angled towards the house so water was running off the slab to the house and then soaking down into the soil right against the foundation.

I plan to fix this once the brickwork is repaired by installing an acco drain and laying a concrete slab so it falls away from the house into this drain, which will then head off down the garden just onto the soil.

The front of the house I'm a bit stuck on because of the levels and what might be under the block paving which I don't know yet.

There's many weekends work here for me as we approach winter which is why I'm willing to pay for someone to come in for the urgent stuff. If I do it it will take me weeks.