If the mortar on your chimney stack is crumbling, you are probably weighing up whether to get it repointed now or leave it another winter. The honest answer on cost is that it varies a lot, and most of the variation comes from access rather than the pointing itself. Here is what homeowners around Newark, Lincoln and Grantham can realistically expect to pay, and why.
For a standard single stack on a two storey house in our area, full repointing usually comes in somewhere between £450 and £1,200 including scaffold or tower access. A small stack on a bungalow that can be reached from a roof ladder and a tower sits at the lower end. A tall shared stack on a Victorian terrace with four or six pots, where the scaffold has to go up from the pavement, sits at the top end or above it.
Where you see quotes well below that, check what is actually being done. Smearing a skim of fresh mortar over the old joints, sometimes called tuck or face pointing, looks fine for a season and then falls off. Proper repointing means raking the joints out to a depth of at least 15 to 20mm, brushing and wetting the brickwork, then packing new mortar in and finishing it to match. That takes most of a day for one person on an average stack, and the price reflects it.
Access is the biggest factor by some distance. A chimney at the gable end of a house with a driveway is quick to scaffold. One on the rear ridge of a mid terrace with an extension below and no side access may need a scaffold bridge over the conservatory, and that alone can double the access cost. Anyone quoting without seeing the stack or at least good photographs of it is guessing.
The mortar matters too. Many older houses in Newark, Southwell and the villages towards Lincoln were built with lime mortar. Repointing those in hard cement traps moisture in the brick and causes the faces to spall off within a few winters. A lime mix costs more in materials and takes longer to work with, so expect a modest premium, but it is the right job for pre 1920s brickwork. Post war houses on cement mortar are simpler.
Finally, condition. If the stack is leaning, the brickwork is soft and crumbling rather than just the joints, or the top few courses have blown, repointing will not hold. At that point you are looking at a partial rebuild from the roofline up, which is typically £1,200 to £2,500 depending on height and whether the pots and lead can be reused.
A good roofer will tell you which of the three you need rather than defaulting to the most expensive. Repointing is the answer when the bricks are sound and it is only the mortar that has washed out, which is the most common situation on stacks between 40 and 100 years old.
A partial rebuild is needed when frost has got into the brick faces or the stack has started to move. If the chimney is redundant and you have no plans to use the flues, taking it down below the roofline and tiling over is sometimes cheaper than a rebuild and removes the maintenance for good. In Lincolnshire, where stacks on exposed fen properties take a lot of wind driven rain, this comes up more often than people expect.
Whatever you go for, ask for the lead flashing and the flaunching to be checked at the same time. The scaffold is already up, and a cracked back gutter is a far more common cause of a damp chimney breast than the pointing itself.
Ask for the quote to state the raking depth, the mortar mix, whether flaunching is included, and whether scaffold is priced separately. Two quotes that look £300 apart often turn out to be the same price once access is added to the cheaper one.
Timing helps as well. Repointing needs a few dry days above about 5°C for the mortar to cure properly, so spring to early autumn is easier and often quicker to book. If a stack is shedding mortar onto the roof in November, a temporary fix and a proper job in March is a reasonable plan rather than rushing it in poor weather.
Done properly with the right mortar, repointing on a chimney stack should last 30 years or more. Poor work over unraked joints can start failing within two or three winters.
Usually not, because insurers treat failed pointing as wear and tear rather than sudden damage. Storm damage to a stack, such as pots blown off or brickwork dislodged, is a different matter and worth a call to your insurer.
The weather facing side, normally south west in this part of the country, often fails first while the sheltered side looks fine. Repointing the worst face only is possible, but once access is paid for, doing the whole stack usually adds little and avoids a second scaffold in a few years.
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