Repointing a stone wall in lime, costs.

[ajlelectronics]

Is there a typical price per square metre for chipping out cement and replacing with lime pointing? I have had a verbal quote of £2600 for the lower part of a cottage wall, not very big (20sqM). I declined it because they were being cagey about who they were and other business details. I need to look around but with hindsight, I thought it expensive.

 

[GRW]

Raking out & Pointing is a labour hungry time consuming task, so it's always going to be pricey (one reason why I'm thinking I'll have to tackle my parents house wall myself).
I've no idea on actual contractor cost though

 

[Wildefalcon]

It's one of my retirement projects for 2035.

 

[fizzy]

@sako243 may be able to help. He has certainly limewashed his very large place. Might have done some pointing as well?

 

[sako243]

Material costs are largely insignificant if it's hydrated lime. It's some sand and lime and water.

Most builders / labourers are circa £20-30/h down here. I had the workshop gable end repointed because we knocked out the end wall to make a large window. The bits they repointed totalled about 15m2 I guess. Took a pair of guys flat out a day to pick it out and prep it and another day to repoint it and they are fast. All on fairly big stones (corners stones are circa 1ft tall at a minimum). So two days at £240/day/person so just shy of £1k excluding materials.

 

[addjunkie]

Raking out & Pointing is a labour hungry time consuming task, so it's always going to be pricey

Hateful slow task, raking out cement and repointing in lime…Lime mortar seems to frighten some, dunno why. According to Mr Google one man does 10m2 per day, Id say about half that. Depending in access etc.

 

[sako243]

@sako243 may be able to help. He has certainly limewashed his very large place. Might have done some pointing as well?

Builders did it but there wasn't much pointing done. They only used 10t of sand for the repointing aspect of it...

 

[GRW]

@sako243 may be able to help. He has certainly limewashed his very large place. Might have done some pointing as well?

Yes, he has, he kindly had me over to check it out. IIRC he was quoted serious money to Lime Render - & went down a Limewash (sprayed on) solution - undertaken by himself. Not sure there was any Pointing undertaken or not.

Edit: crossover with the man himself response

 

[sako243]

Hateful slow task, raking out cement and repointing in lime…Lime mortar seems to frighten some, dunno why. According to Mr Google one man does 10m2 per day, Id say about half that. Depending in access etc.

Hydraulic is a completely different beast to hydrated. Some people react more than others to it since it is alkaline.

 

[jmp49]

Hateful slow task, raking out cement and repointing in lime…Lime mortar seems to frighten some, dunno why. According to Mr Google one man does 10m2 per day, Id say about half that. Depending in access etc.

Heh yes, having done it chiselling off decades old blue concrete render is a huge drag. Then loading the giant custard gun with lime and running round the prepped wall is a great relief after that drudgery.
I've been putting off doing the house itself for over 10 years now...

 

[GRW]

Heh yes, having done it chiselling off decades old blue concrete render is a huge drag. Then loading the giant custard gun with lime and running round the prepped wall is a great relief after that drudgery.
I've been putting off doing the house itself for over 10 years now...

If I ended up having to point my folks wall - I was toying with the idea of trying an air chisel to rake joints out. Worth a lash?

 

[colnerov]

A Mortar rake will speed it up, although there may be dust produced.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/18583231...CFmhH7nh1w9pa8Qp7B0nLkKzpw==|tkp:BFBMvpjSoPRl

 

[GRW]

A Mortar rake will speed it up, although there may be dust produced.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185832318711?_skw=mortar+rake+grinder&itmmeta=01JYH0MHGFJPR61QD30ENDTHXF&hash=item2b447826f7:g:bjgAAOSwlRVfq9lu&itmprp=enc:AQAKAAAA8FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1du+kriAuKjkQbnhAjNVSNWyW/x0JrIebZOPlxrPAhWLsvU78k1SSjvwHlzq5yN3TYtNKP5wSJxfWg5zQ1EdPbgjqYjP9mzL9z/9/ANfRXkcgXgcC4MFGxJlusn555KfIKfFTy0uiis1ML9EgeYj2av5eohGfb3mu0kPbR0McVoJz+YAIoZ/P1HlJCOPTFe32BuuuA23HHPebaN9/8UjmdT9bhLThx0yEMpuNYxLPrPsymg0gZqpHgE1OhO12EVvh1qEOUjl+stVIfIGQC8CFmhH7nh1w9pa8Qp7B0nLkKzpw==|tkp:BFBMvpjSoPRl

I've got some similar 115mm or 125mm masonry discs - I dare say they'd work as well.
I was thinking those that it's a very dusty, messy & noisy method - hence the air chisel idea

 

[gaz1]

Raking out & Pointing is a labour hungry time consuming task, so it's always going to be pricey (one reason why I'm thinking I'll have to tackle my parents house wall myself).
I've no idea on actual contractor cost though

If I ended up having to point my folks wall - I was toying with the idea of trying an air chisel to rake joints out. Worth a lash?

as a warning here its a chore to do and seriously boring

pointing is one of those jobs you can do it but you have to know how its not as easy as many think

the whole front of the house was grinded out and repointed the side was cement rendared and removed with chisel drill and then grinded
whilst i did the grinding i didnt do the pointing

 

[brightspark]

If I ended up having to point my folks wall - I was toying with the idea of trying an air chisel to rake joints out. Worth a lash?

i used a small air chissel with a brickies chissel welded on to it and a stillsaw with 2 blades in it off scaffolding and did the whole house 2 semis knocked in to one. wore my shotblasting airfed helmet and raked the lot out in no time 10mm deep all; the uprite snots left i just used the air chissel to knock em off re pointed it all and then lightly sandblasted it then sealed it all with thompsons waterseal silicone . looks like a new house , been done 35 years now and still looks mint

 

[Gareth J]

I've used an air chisel to bust out old cement before redoing in lime before. It works but I wouldn't say it's significantly more, or less horrible than any other method I tried. The biggest advantage was I could chip off old render and rake out joints with one tool. Does pose more risk of loosening smaller stones but that's not a huge issue.

 

[Dragnet]

Hydrated lime from the builders' merchant is not the same as lime putty. Lime pointing will be lime putty mortar. Anything hydraulic is unnecessary unless you are in an exposed location, and even then it should be used with caution depending on the surrounding stone. The fact that cement's compressive strength is so (unnecessarily) high has led cautious engineers to specify hydraulic limes with strengths after a couple of years wildly in excess of anything used in buildings several hundreds of years old (if not a couple of thousand in the case of Roman structures). Perhaps 10% pozzolan added to a pre-mixed putty mortar at most for a damp area. You really need to keep the mortar softer and more flexible than the surrounding masonry, which is lime's fundamental advantage.

From Gloucester your best bets will likely be Mike Wye in Devon, or Ty Mawr in Brecon unless you know of a more local supplier. Mortar can be bought pre-mixed for convenience (colour matching is available to existing mortars and aggregates), and a ton dumpy bag will be something shy of £300 inc. VAT plus delivery. Labour cost will increase if the wall is random rubble as it's much harder to remove the cement without damaging the stone because of the irregular joints, especially if it's a soft shale. At this time of year, there will be labour costs associated with coming back to check on the drying in case it progresses too quickly in the heat, and keeping the wall suitably damp to ensure carbonation starts rather than the mortar drying out and flaking off. It's taken me half a day before to do 4m2 of cement render and the underlying cement pointing in random rubble with a pneumatic chisel. Quite satisfying, but it can be a pig.

Other problems they might be factoring into the cost might be the state of the underlying lime (assuming the cement has been pointed over existing lime) and the possibility of having to rebuild any parts where existing stones have been bedded in cement. On our solid rubble walls there was a significant amount of needle-gunning off cement residue, powdery over-dry ancient lime, blowing out the gaps to ensure the wetting down actually reaches the old mortar and putting back stones that had to come out.

If you have the time, the whole job is entirely within the capability of a sensitive DIYer with the right advice. Remember most solid walls in ordinary dwellings or farm outbuildings now converted to housing used as little lime as possible since it was more expensive than using what was to hand, and most old mortars are made of mud, sand, clay and some lime as a binder!

It sounds expensive, but then it's a lot of labour and will probably need a few dumpy bags, if my experience of how old walls can swallow mortar is any guide. It sounds as though you have a bad feeling about them, so I'm sure there'll be someone more forthcoming you could engage to do the work. Perhaps an enquiry with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) would be worthwhile - their booklets contain ads for traditional craftspeople, or asking the lime suppliers if they have anyone in their address books.

 

[jmp49]

If I ended up having to point my folks wall - I was toying with the idea of trying an air chisel to rake joints out. Worth a lash?

That was the weapon of choice that triggered the concrete comment, there's something in old concrete that makes it like steel, and by stone walls, I mean built of all shapes with mud and straw then lime rendered between them with chaux blanc (white hydraulic lime) to stop the rain washing the infill out. You cant dig out with a disc cutter either because there's not a straight line on the run. I think a few hours hoping the compressor would run out of air and give a break while it built the tank back up, interspersed with shouts of "what the hell is this stuff made of?" and general curses. Ive seen walls fall over when the concrete layer was removed too, it was all that was holding them up still in places!

There were people who thought that covering up loose stone and lime walls with a inch thick smarm of concrete render made it "more modern", and now we've gone full circle and people finally understand its a disaster that locks in the damp rather than letting it breath. Sadly my house was a old tractor storage shed, and someone mostly covered everything with agri concrete and patching stone wall damage with breeze block infills. Pity they didnt pour some of it in underpinnings for the walls...

I have to build a stone wall to finish the patio off, but I've put off that by sorting the loose stone into 3 piles, and filling ibc cages with each pile distinctly, then just drove them to position with forklift, instant wall with big gabons, bonus you dont have to render it. I did think about filling it with lime mortar in the ibc cage like a giant mould and tipping them out and gluing them together instead

I have no experience of repointing a wall made of perfectly square blocks or bricks like some of the above and hope to never gain any.

 

[ajlelectronics]

This is what we are dealing with. The stone is local "Blue Mud stone?" Which has not been happy with the bizarre cement pointing.

I have tried a couple of self proclaimed specialists in Stroud, but they both only have mobile numbers which go to voicemail.

 

[frank horton]

Cement pointing unless it's damages the stone….I paid £50 per m2 twenty years ago….
The guys said it will cost the same even if I chipped out the mortar….So let ‘em get on with it…
Apart from a few rainy days it all went well n fast….
I used my own throwaway tarps under the scaffolding to ease clean up..