Rendering in Ashley

Sounding the elevation. A knuckle over the whole wall. Sound render answers dead, blown render drums, and on a dashed wall the surface gives you almost no clue, because a filthy elevation can be perfectly sound and a tidy one can be hollow for a metre.

Matching from a sample panel. Where we are repairing rather than replacing, a panel goes up on your own wall with the aggregate and the throw we intend to use, and you judge it in daylight before we go further.

Hacking off. Render that has parted from the background comes off to the brick or block, the wall is cleaned down, friable areas are stabilised and the background is left to dry. Nothing goes over a hollow area, however tempting it looks.

Pebbledash and Tyrolean. Dashing throws aggregate into a wet coat by hand, Tyrolean is flicked on from a machine, and both are still perfectly good finishes. Where a whole elevation is being redone, a matched modern aggregate gives an even, consistent wall in a way a patch never will.

Silicone thin coat. A polymer basecoat with a full mesh, a primer and a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. This is what most people move to when they decide to change the look rather than chase a match, and it flexes and sheds water better than the original ever did.

Monocouche. One through-coloured material in two passes, scraped back the following day. Crisp and even on a sound background, and less suited to a wall that has been repaired repeatedly over the years.

Traditional sand and cement. The scratch coat and float coat under most of the dash here, finished and painted with a breathable masonry paint. Where it is still stuck it is worth keeping.

Older solid walls. A few period, pre-1919 buildings sit among the newer stock. A solid wall dries through its own face, so it wants a breathable lime render rather than a modern system that leaves moisture trapped behind it.

Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast keeps the render clear of the ground, stop beads finish it at a soffit or a corner, and angle beads keep the reveals straight. Being near the coast, beads go in stainless rather than galvanised.

Cracking, delamination and algae. Map crazing is a surface fault. A crack from a window head is movement. Frost turns either into a blown panel, and green growth is treated and cleaned at low pressure, never blasted off a dashed wall with a lance.

Render over external wall insulation. With EWI the render is the weather face of the system, over a render carrier board or the boards themselves, with a mesh basecoat and a thin coat over it, and every bead, sill and pipe reset to the new thickness. On a single storey house the access is modest, which makes it worth pricing.

No rate per square metre, because the square metres are the easy part; what is already on the wall decides the price.

Getting to it. A bungalow elevation off a tower, a chalet gable with a dormer and a two storey semi on the older streets are three different platforms. A bungalow gable comes off a tower, a three storey elevation wants a scaffold, and the platform has to stand for the whole system rather than a day. The work at height rules are why it is a priced line rather than something folded into a rate.

What is already on the wall. Rendering over sound brick is one job. Hacking off blown sand and cement, or a pebbledash that has parted from the background, is another, and it is the part nobody can see from the road. We tap the whole elevation before quoting, because the hollow areas set the hours.

The system, and what the wall behind it needs. Silicone thin coat over insulation, monocouche through-coloured, or traditional sand and cement all price differently and behave differently. On a solid wall that has to breathe, a plastic-rich modern system traps moisture and moves the problem inside, so the right system is a wall decision rather than a colour decision.

Comparing quotes? Ask which system is being quoted and how many coats, whether the old render is being hacked off or overlaid, whether beads, bellcast and stop ends are included, whether the scaffold is in the price, and what happens to the existing sills and pipework. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

Pebbledash and Tyrolean get their colour from the stone in them, not from a pigment. The aggregate on a house built here in the late 1950s came from whatever local pit was supplying then, at whatever grading was normal, and both have long since changed. Sixty years of weather has lightened the exposed faces unevenly too. So a new patch can be matched carefully for size, colour and throw and still read as newer, because it is.

There are three sensible ways round it and they cost very different amounts. Repair the failed area and accept a visible patch, which is right on a rear elevation or somewhere out of the eye line. Take the repair out to a natural break, a corner, a bay or a change of plane, so the eye reads a whole panel rather than a mend. Or redo the elevation in one go, re-dashed with a matched modern aggregate or changed to a through-coloured thin coat, which ends the matching problem for good. We will price whichever you want and say which we would choose on your wall.

We cover Ashley, New Milton, Bashley, Barton on Sea and Hordle, broadly BH25, under New Forest District Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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.