A brick town, inside and out
Brick is in Burgess Hill's bones. Small scale brick and tile making was flourishing on St John's Common by the early seventeenth century, and the town council's history describes brick and tile works spreading across the town in the Victorian era, from William Norman's works at The Brow, bounded by London Road, Station Road and Church Road, to the Meeds works on Station Road, which was once called Pottery Lane. The Keymer Brick and Tile Company carried on manufacturing until 2014. The district council describes the Fairfield conservation area, west of London Road, as the largest concentration of small Victorian terraced housing in Mid Sussex, with brick used for most of its buildings as a reminder of that industry.
Why brick walls need floating
When plaster on a brick wall blows, cracks or is hacked off after damp or a rewire, there is nothing flat left to skim onto. Float and set rebuilds the surface in two stages. The float, a backing coat, is spread onto the masonry, ruled flat and plumb with a straight edge and scratched to give a key. The set, a finish coat, is trowelled smooth over it once the float has firmed up. In a terrace where the walls have drifted out of true after many rounds of repair, deep hollows are built up in layers rather than one heavy coat. The result is a hard wall that holds heavy fixings and stands up to knocks better than plasterboard.
Extensions and new openings
If your Victorian terrace is gaining a kitchen extension or a knocked-through living room, or your post-war semi is being extended at the side or back, there will be new blockwork and fresh reveals to plaster. Those, along with walls exposed by a removed chimney breast or a new doorway, are classic float and set work. Kitchen walls carry the heaviest load in most houses, with wall units, tiles and appliances, which is one reason a floated wall is often chosen there. If you would rather board the new walls, plasterboarding and dry lining in Burgess Hill explains the faster, drier option, and the final finish is covered on our plastering and skimming in Burgess Hill page.
When damp caused the failure
On older solid walls, plaster usually fails for a reason. If damp is behind it, the cause has to be sorted before any backing coat goes on, otherwise the new plaster soon fails along the same line. The materials used on older solid walls also matter, because they need to be able to dry out. Tell us roughly when the house was built and we will talk through what suits before work starts. Our damp proofing in Burgess Hill page covers finding and fixing the cause.
Drying out before decorating
A floated wall holds far more water than a skim, so it needs longer before paint. How long depends on the thickness, the season and the airflow in the room. Keep windows open a crack and the heating gentle rather than high, and wait until the whole wall has turned an even pale colour. Our main float and set page has more detail, and our Burgess Hill area page lists the rest of our work in the town.
