Home DIY

Remember my cellar?

I finally got around to getting a builder to have a look earlier this week with a view to getting the repointing etc. done.

He's (very) local and comes recommended - we know a couple who have used him and are happy with his work and he's repointed a whole house down the road. A few things I'm not sure about though...

One is that he thinks it would be a waste of time/money to use lime mortar - it would create issues due to the confined space of the cellar and cost a lot more. He reckons the original cement was portland, which having done some cursory googling seems feasible as it was invented in England in 1824, and our house is 1860s. He's confident nothing will crack down the road and has pointed out that as he only does local work he's got his reputation to worry about - if it did crack it wouldn't do his reputation locally much good. So, I think I'm ok with that.

He also thinks sealing the bricks with brick seal once the repointing is done would be a good idea. My only question with this is whether the walls will be able to breath with this stuff on? Everyone seems to think this is important. As I understand it he is suggesting using this to keep moisture out of the cellar?

Finally apparently our water pipe (in the top photo) is lead and this is bad (it was outlawed in 1970). This should really have been removed when they converted our building into two flats in '86, but they didn't do it.

He reckons long term it's not good to have all our water going through a lead pipe and I should let him replace it with a plastic one, but google says lead pipes in hard water areas will have a limescale coating that will stop us getting poisoned. I'm inclined to replace it anyway as otherwise he'll have to repoint around it, but any thoughts?

so 147 years later, the bricks need sealing?

re-point it and leave it alone.

as for the pipe, i'd replace it.