Plastering in Milford on Sea
Render repairs at the corners and beads, skimming, ceilings and salt-damp walls across Milford on Sea and SO41, priced in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Render this close to the water at Milford on Sea almost never fails in the middle of a wall. It fails at the corners and the openings, because the steel beads behind it have rusted and pushed the render off. That is a repairable fault, and it is worth knowing before somebody quotes you for a whole elevation.
Three things bring people here to the phone. Render that has cracked or blown on the seaward side of the house, often in a line down an external corner. Damp showing inside on an outside wall, with paint lifting and salts blooming through it. Or the ordinary work: a ceiling that has cracked or sagged, or a flat that wants skimming through before it is let or sold.
The survey is a knuckle on every wall and ceiling inside, and outside a look at the elevation from a tower rather than from the pavement, because corner damage does not read from the ground. You get a written price that separates the repair from the full strip out. The site visit and the quote are free and we are about twelve miles along the coast.
The work
Salt air gets to the bead buried in the corner
Salt gets to the bead buried in the corner. The biggest single job in the town. Galvanised angle bead and stop bead were standard for decades, and less than a kilometre from the water the coating gives up and the steel rusts. Rust takes up more room than steel does, so it lifts the render off the corner in a strip, usually down an external angle or around a window reveal. The repair is to cut the render back beyond the damage, take the old bead out completely rather than render over it, fit stainless mesh bead, and rebuild the corner in a basecoat with mesh before the topcoat.
The exposed side of nearly every house here faces south west, into wind-driven rain off the water. A rigid sand and cement render on that elevation cracks with the movement and then holds water in the wall behind it. Where the render has to come off completely, the build-up that copes best is a scratch coat, a mesh-reinforced basecoat, a primer and a silicone topcoat, because it sheds water at the surface and still lets the wall dry. Monocouche carries the colour through the material. Pebbledash can be repaired, but matching it across a patched wall is genuinely difficult and we say so first.
A quarter of the homes here are flats, so a good share of this work belongs to a freeholder or a management company rather than to whoever can see the crack. We quote those itemised by elevation, with the scaffold and its standing time on its own line so it can be split fairly between leaseholders. Where leaseholders are being recharged for a major job, section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 sets out the consultation the landlord has to run before the work starts, and an itemised quote is what that process needs. Inside a block it is stairwell ceilings, hallway walls and making good after a leak from the flat above.
Salt earns its reputation on the inside face too. Old render and old masonry near the sea hold hygroscopic salts, and salts pull water out of the air long after the wall has dried, so the patch stays cold and blooms back through fresh paint. Find the water path first, then use a renovating backing coat that holds the salts back, or on a solid wall a breathable lime plaster. Sealing the wall up with a waterproof coating and hoping does not work.
Over half the town went up between the war and the early eighties: a block inner leaf, a float coat and a gypsum finish usually still stuck, so walls that knock solid take two passes of finish coat and walls that drum come off and take a new backing coat. About one house in nine predates 1919, solid wall construction where lime and a breathable render are the right repair rather than a preference, and twenty-eight entries in the parish are listed. Extensions and loft rooms at the other end are dry lining, taped, beaded at every corner and reveal, then skimmed.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised rather than one figure on the back of a card,. There is no conservation area over Milford on Sea, so on an unlisted house the render system and the colour are your choice, and renewing an elevation in a similar material is maintenance rather than development. Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that stops. Twenty-eight entries in the parish are listed, and a listed building needs consent for a change of plaster or render whatever it looks like from the road. Stripping and renewing render across an elevation is where Approved Document L asks whether the wall should be insulated while it is open. New Forest District Council here.
Cost
What decides the price
No rate per square metre. What is behind the finish decides it: a sound wall wants a skim, a blown one comes off back to the masonry and brings a backing coat into the job. In Milford on Sea access is usually a bungalow on one of the roads behind the front where a tower reaches everything, a flat in a block where one platform serves several homes at once, or a house near the cliff where the scaffold has to be tied and braced for wind. Ask whether the beads and making good are in the figure, and how long the platform stands.
If it has come down
A ceiling down, or plaster coming off the wall
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that has cracked and dropped, or plaster coming off a wall in sheets, goes to the front of the queue. We are about twelve miles along the coast, so a same-day look is usually possible, and after a blow it is worth checking the external corners and the reveals from the ground for a lifted edge before water gets behind the render.
Worth knowing
Salt gets at the beads long before it gets at the render
Milford on Sea sits close enough to the water that salt is on the walls every day of the year, and on plastering work it changes the metal rather than the mix. Almost every rendered corner in the town has a steel angle bead buried a few millimetres under the surface.
Galvanising slows corrosion down but salt gets through it, and when that steel rusts it expands and pushes the render off in a strip along the corner. That is why so much render here looks perfect across the flat and is failing down every external angle and around the window reveals.
Two things follow, and both are worth asking any renderer about before you accept a price. First, the old bead has to come out rather than be rendered over, because covering rust simply moves the problem along a year, and what replaces it should be stainless or a mesh bead with no steel in it.
Second, the wall wants to be able to dry: a mesh-reinforced basecoat with a silicone topcoat keeps driven rain out at the surface while still letting moisture back through, where a waterproof masonry coating over a salt-laden wall traps it and pushes the damp inside instead. The seaward elevation also ages faster than the sheltered side of the same house, so it is worth walking round and looking at the corners every couple of years.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
About twelve miles from us, covering Milford on Sea, Everton, Hordle and the SO41 addresses along this stretch of coast, with New Forest District Council for planning and building control. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Milford on Sea questions we get asked
We are seven hundred metres from the sea. Does that change render?
It changes both the specification and the maintenance. At under a kilometre from the water the walls here take salt carried in on the wind, which keeps a surface damp between showers and eats any metal in it, beads, lintel ends and fixings alike. So we use stainless beads and a silicone topcoat that sheds rather than soaks. The seaward elevation then wants rinsing down every year or two, which is the part most people skip.
Ours is a flat in a block. Who signs off render?
The freeholder or the managing agent, not you. A quarter of the homes in Milford on Sea are flats, and in a block the external walls are held in common, so a leaseholder cannot instruct render on their own elevation. Ask the agent to request the quote. We can price the whole building or a single elevation of it, and they can then put that in front of the leaseholders properly.
Do we need consent for a cottage near the church?
Only where the cottage itself is listed, or attached to something that is. Twenty eight listed entries sit in Milford on Sea, the Church of All Saints among them, and there is no conservation area over the village, so the rest of the housing is unconstrained. New Forest District Council is the planning authority here rather than the National Park. They will confirm the status of an address over the phone.
Why is only the south west wall breaking up?
Because that is the wall taking the weather off the water. The exposed elevation faces south west, so it collects the driven rain and the salt while the sheltered sides stay comparatively dry, and render on that face crazes and lifts years earlier. There is no sense in stripping four walls when one has failed. So we price elevations separately, and you do the face that has gone and leave the others until they need it.
Is winter a bad time for outside work here?
Winter is when the seaward elevation is hardest to work on, because render needs a dry background going on and a run of days without driven rain afterwards. This close to the water that window is short between November and March. Internal work carries on regardless. Where the render has opened and water is getting in, we can cut out and make the damage safe now, then do the full elevation in spring.
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Get your Milford on Sea render looked at properly
A free site visit, the corners and reveals checked from a tower rather than the pavement, and an itemised written quote.