Bricklaying & Repointing

Lime mortar pointing onto cement & brick wall?

Anonymous user 28/02/2024 - 3.52 PM

A conservatory was added (I'm guessing in the 70's) with modern-looking bricks & I'm assuming cement mortar. Some time between then & now it was pointed using something which never dries out in Winter and in fact that time of year the pointing is rather mushy, almost like dried up toothpaste (at first we thought someone had used plaster!). In Summer it's pretty dry & hard but what with all the moisture going in & out of the stuff it is falling out of the joints. So we've raked out all the loose stuff and seem to have got down to a cement layer at the normal pointing depth which makes me think the brickwork was done using cement. So should we repoint with a cement or lime mortar? There's never been any spalling.