Verge tiles: crumbling mortar

[mike004]

Just bought a 70s bungalow. Standard concrete roof tiles.

I have noticed that the mortar around the verge tiles on the gable end which is exposed to westerly winds has crumbled in places.

* Is this a job suitable for a newbie? Scrape off crumbling mortar and repoint.
* I'm not sure, but the 70's builders may have used asbestos cement. Is this anything to panic about!
* Is this a job I can leave for a few months until late summer? The house survey picked up on this and gave it a "Not urgent but needs to be looked at at some stage" mark.

Thanks
Mike

 

[Freddie]

Why do you think the 70's buider would have used asbestos cement, is because that side of the house gets warm from the sun??????????

 

[DAZB]

It is a fairly easy job as long as you are comfortable with ladder work. You rake out the loose mortar and repoint using a strong mix of 3 sand to 1 cement . The only problem with leaving it till Summer is that you may get small birds nesting in there if they can get in.

 

[Porker]

Same problem. The sparrows have moved in so a job for the Autumn I think.

 

[Freddie]

It is a fairly easy job as long as you are comfortable with ladder work. You rake out the loose mortar and repoint using a strong mix of 3 sand to 1 cement . The only problem with leaving it till Summer is that you may get small birds nesting in there if they can get in.

It does help aswell if you paint the surfaces with unibond as you go just to give it that bit of extra stick-----and sometimes its better to do it in 2 stages after leaving the first fill to dry but scoring it before so, so the finish fill sticks.

On the last fill if you leave it to go off, just before it does get back up there with a small bucket of water and a paintbrush and lightly brush the semi-dry surface to give it an A1 uniform finish