Building Services in Littlehampton

Littlehampton sits at the mouth of the Arun, and the river mouth is a harsher spot than the open beach either side of it. Wind funnels along the channel, and properties near the harbour and the East Bank take salt spray driven off both the sea and the estuary. Anything metal on the outside of a building here — gutter brackets, garage doors, railings, window furniture — corrodes faster than it does half a mile inland.

The town-centre and harbourside terraces are solid-wall construction, which handles water quite differently from a cavity wall. Damp travels through the wall rather than being stopped, and hard modern pointing applied over a softer original mix traps moisture and forces the damage out through the face of the brick instead. Repointing here needs the right mix, not the strongest one.

Low-lying ground near the river adds a persistent moisture load at the base of walls, which shows up as perished plaster on ground floors, salt staining on brickwork, and rot in skirtings, floor timbers and door frames close to ground level.

The most common avoidable mistake we see on Littlehampton's older terraces is repointing with a hard cement mortar. On a solid wall the mortar joint is meant to be the softer, sacrificial part of the wall — it lets moisture out and it takes the wear. Replace it with something harder than the brick and the moisture has to leave through the brick face instead, which spalls and crumbles the surface. Undoing that is far more expensive than pointing it correctly in the first place, so it is worth asking any builder what mix they intend to use.