Importance of external render and repointing

[casper.slonina]

I'm in the process of renovating my narrow victorian terrace. So far I'm focusing on re-plastering walls in lime internally. At this moment it is looking good and damp issues are not visible - it seems like the brick/walls have a chance to breathe again - at least from the inside. My question is how important is to replace external side cement render and to repoint bricks on the front and back of the house with lime instead of cement. The reason for asking is because there are plenty of things to do in our renovation process and stripping down existing cement render/joints then redoing it in lime would take a lot of time for a DIYer. Should I prioritise this, or would internal breathability be sufficient enough to keep the house free of damp and mould it was struggling with before.

Thank you in advance.

 

[housewinnie]

If the mortar joints are cement based you may find that its only a thin layer over lime in which case you could chip it out and may not have to rush to repoint. Also be careful as quite often the cement is really hard and damaging bricks, if you have bricks is easy.

 

[Zebra]

Does the house have a DPC? If it does, then cement mortar might well be fine. Are the bricks spalling? Are they soft or hard? Are there cracks?
The question of whether replacing the pointing is necessary is a difficult one without assessing the problem in more detail, but if there's not a problem, then it might appear not to need fixing.....

 

[stuart45]

The problem with cement mortar repointing is that a lot of it was done with a really strong mix of 3/1 or even stronger. Weaker mixes of 6/1/1, or 9/2/1 are usually less of an issue, and might be OK to leave for a while.