The six crews
Brickwork services run from the Rotherham yard
RWD Brickwork Limited keeps a small number of crews, each trained on a narrow set of jobs, and every job starts at the yard. Bricks are sorted and matched there, lime is gauged there, and the line pins and profiles are checked before the van is loaded. That is the reason the work below stays consistent from one street to the next. The six services are garden wall builds, chimney rebuild crews, fireplace opening works, repointing cycles, block paving beds and brick match sourcing, and each has a full description on this page.
First crew on the rail
Garden Wall Builds
A garden wall looks simple and behaves badly when it is built without a footing. Our crew digs a trench to firm ground, pours a strip footing wider than the wall face and brings up two courses of engineering brick below the damp line. Only then does the facing brick start, laid in stretcher bond with a half-brick return at each end. Piers are built at intervals that suit the run, and where a wall meets a gate post the pier is tied in with stainless ties rather than left to butt against the post.
The crew works from a line pin at each end and a profile board at the corners, checking the gauge every third course. Coping is bedded on a weak mix so it can move slightly without cracking, and the joints are finished with a bucket handle or a weatherstruck profile depending on the wall. Before leaving, the crew brushes the face, clears the footing of mortar droppings and leaves a clean line for the garden to meet. A typical run of ten metres is built in two days once the footing has cured, and the price is fixed from the survey rather than from an hourly rate.
Second crew on the rail
Chimney Rebuild Crews
Chimneys fail at the top, and the damage travels down. The flaunching cracks, water gets in behind the pots, the face goes soft and the stack starts to lean. Our chimney crew strips the flaunching to sound brick, checks the corbel and rebuilds the upper courses with brick matched to the original stack. Where the lean is structural, the crew rebuilds from the roof line up rather than patching the top and leaving the movement in place. Scaffold is rigged, used and struck within one booking so the roof is never open longer than it needs to be.
Pots are set on a bed of mortar with a shoulder of flaunching sloped away from the pot, and a cowl is fitted where the flue is down draughting. The crew also repoints the stack face while the scaffold is up, because a rebuilt top on a tired face is half a job. On completion the client gets a photo record of each face and a note of the brick source, which the office keeps alongside the survey drawing. Most single-stack rebuilds take three to four days including scaffold, and the crew always inspects the roof covering at the abutment before handing back.
Third crew on the rail
Fireplace Opening Works
Opening a fireplace back to a working recess is a structural job disguised as a cosmetic one. The crew surveys the breast first to find the original opening and the flue line, then props the brickwork above, cuts a slot for a new lintel and removes the infill in courses rather than in one collapse. The back of the recess is laid in brick, the cheeks are made good and the whole opening is cleaned back to a sound arris. Surround and hearth are protected with board throughout, and the room is screened so dust stays in one place.
Once the lintel is bedded and the recess is bricked, the crew checks the flue draw and points out anything the client needs to know before a stove is fitted. If the flue needs a liner, we say so at the survey rather than after the opening is formed. The finish is deliberately plain so a stove installer or a plasterer can take it on without reworking brick. This is careful, slow work, and it is priced from the survey by the opening rather than by the day, because nobody benefits from a crew rushing a breast.
Fourth crew on the rail
Repointing Cycles
Repointing is described here as a cycle because that is how the crew works it. A bay of wall is raked to a consistent depth, brushed out, wetted and pointed in one pass, so the mortar in that bay cures together and the joint profile stays uniform. The crew never rakes a whole elevation in the morning and points it in the afternoon, because the face dries out and the new mortar fails to bond. Lime mixes are judged against the age and softness of the brick, and a cement mix is only used where the original wall was built with one.
On older Rotherham terraces the common problem is cement pointing trapping water in a soft red wall. The remedy is to rake the cement out carefully, let the wall dry and repoint in a lime mix that moves with the brick. That takes longer and it costs more, and it is the only way the wall survives. The crew works a scaffold lift at a time, keeps the working area sheeted and brushes down at the end of each day. A price is set after a test patch, because the condition of the joints, not the area alone, decides the work.
Fifth crew on the rail
Block Paving Beds
A paving bed is a drainage decision before it is a finish. The crew sets the excavation depth from the kerb line and the door threshold, lays a compacted sub-base and screeds a sand bed to a fall that takes water away from the house. Kerbs and edging are bedded in concrete so the field cannot creep, and the closing course is cut by hand with a bench saw rather than snapped and hidden. Where a bed meets a wall, the crew leaves a gap for movement and fills it with a compressible strip.
Blocks are laid in a herringbone or a stretcher pattern depending on the run, and the pattern is set out dry before any sand is screeded so the client can see it. After laying, the surface is compacted and the joints are filled with kiln-dried sand, then swept and re-swept over the following days. The crew returns once to top up the joints after the first rain, because that is when a paving bed settles. Driveway and patio beds are priced per square metre from the survey, with cutting and edging counted separately so there are no surprises on the invoice.
Sixth crew on the rail
Brick Match Sourcing
Matching a brick is part science and part patience. The yard keeps a sample wall of reclaimed and current stocks, and the sourcing crew brings candidate bricks to the original wall and lays them dry before any order is raised. Size, colour and texture all have to agree. A brick that is the right colour but half a shade too smooth will read as a patch from across the street, so the crew often mixes two or three sources in a single repair to spread the variation. That is what makes a wall look untouched.
For listed and older buildings the crew works from photographs and salvaged brick where the original is out of production. Every match is recorded with the source, the batch and a sample photograph, so a repair made this year can be followed in five years without guesswork. The sourcing service can run on its own or as part of a larger build, and it is often the first step before a chimney or a garden wall is priced. Bring a photograph to the yard, or book a survey, and the crew will lay the samples against the wall with you.
How a job moves through the yard
One: survey on site
A foreman walks the elevation with a gauging rod and a sample board, and writes the bond, the mix and the likely brick source onto a job slip.
Two: material pulled in the yard
Brick is sorted and laid dry against the original. Lime, sand and ties are pulled from their bays and checked against the slip.
Three: the crew sets out
Line pins and profiles go in first. The first course is checked for level and gauge before the wall is allowed to rise.
Four: hand back and record
The face is brushed, the site is cleared and a photo record is filed with the survey drawing. The client keeps the same copy.