Most terraced and semi-detached homes across Rochdale, Oldham and Manchester are built from Accrington brick, local red brick or sandstone, and all of them take a battering from a wet, windy Pennine climate. Facade restoration is the work of bringing that frontage back into sound, weathertight condition rather than just making it look tidy. This guide explains what actually needs doing, what it tends to cost and how to avoid the mistakes we see most often.
The word covers a broad range of jobs, and the right mix depends on what your building is made of and how it has been treated over the years. On a typical pre-1930 brick terrace in Rochdale the list usually includes raking out and repointing failed mortar, replacing spalled or cracked bricks, cleaning off soot and biological growth, and sorting out the bits that let water in: cills, copings, lintels and the junction with the roof.
Stone frontages, common around Littleborough, Milnrow and the older parts of Heywood, need a different approach. Sandstone is soft and porous, so cleaning has to be gentle and repointing has to use a mortar softer than the stone itself. Rendered and pebbledashed houses, which are everywhere in the 1930s to 1970s estates, are more about hairline cracks, hollow patches and failed paint systems.
The obvious sign is bricks that look like they have been chewed. That is spalling: water gets into the face of the brick, freezes, and pops the surface off. Once a brick has started to spall it will keep going, and any hard cement mortar around it will speed the process up because the moisture cannot escape through the joints.
Less obvious are damp patches inside on the front wall, green staining under a cill or gutter, mortar you can scrape out with a key, and render that sounds hollow when you tap it. Any of these on a Manchester home is worth looking at before winter rather than after, because a wet wall going through thirty or forty freeze-thaw cycles between November and March can lose a surprising amount of face in one season.
Almost every house in Greater Manchester built before around 1920 was laid in lime mortar. Lime is softer than the brick, breathes and lets moisture out. Over the decades a lot of these houses have been repointed in hard cement, often in a raised or strap style that looks neat but traps water in the brick. The result is exactly the spalling described above, and it is one of the most common causes of facade damage we come across in Rochdale.
Proper restoration on an older house means raking the cement out carefully to a depth of at least 20 to 25 mm and repointing in a lime mortar matched to the original. It is slower and it costs more per square metre than a quick cement job, but it is the difference between a frontage that lasts fifty years and one that needs doing again in ten. For post-war brick and most rendered houses, a cement-lime mix is normally fine.
Prices depend heavily on access, the condition of the wall and the material, so treat these as guides rather than quotes. Repointing a standard two-storey terrace frontage in Greater Manchester typically comes in somewhere between 1,800 and 4,500 pounds including scaffold, with lime work at the upper end. Replacing individual bricks tends to add 20 to 40 pounds each depending on the match. A full re-render on a similar frontage usually sits in the 4,000 to 8,000 pound range. Cleaning on its own, done gently, is often 600 to 1,500 pounds.
Scaffolding is a fixed cost that does not change much whether you do a little or a lot, which is why it makes sense to tackle the cills, gutters and any roof edge repairs at the same time. A repoint on a standard frontage is usually one to two weeks on site, with lime needing a few days protected from rain and frost to cure, so spring to early autumn is the sensible window.
A good facade job is mostly preparation and patience. Raking out should be done by hand or with a small grinder used carefully, not a big disc that widens the joints. Replacement bricks should match in size, colour and texture; reclaimed Accrington and local reds are available from yards around Bury and Oldham. New pointing should be finished slightly recessed or flush, not smeared across the brick face.
Ask to see previous work in the area, walk past it if you can, and be wary of anyone offering to pressure wash old brick or promising a whole frontage in two days. Done properly, restoration is not glamorous, but it protects the most exposed wall of your house from the weather that Greater Manchester is very good at supplying.
It is best avoided on pre-war brick and any sandstone. High pressure strips the fired skin off the brick face and drives water into the wall, which then causes spalling. Low pressure water, steam or a poultice cleaner is safer and just as effective on soot and algae.
For like-for-like repairs on an ordinary house, no. If the property is listed or in a conservation area, changes to materials, colour or rendering over brick may need consent, so it is worth a quick call to the council's planning department before work starts.
Lime repointing done properly on an older house should last 40 to 60 years or more. Cement-lime work on a post-war house is usually good for 25 to 40 years, depending on exposure and how well the gutters and cills are looked after.
A quick chat is usually enough to establish whether your project is a good fit for Honeyman. Drawings, sketches or a postcode all welcome.