Rendering in Ashley

Sounding the elevation comes first. A knuckle goes over the whole of an Ashley 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 Ashley wall with the aggregate and the throw we intend to use, and you judge it in daylight before we go further.

Hacking off. Render on an Ashley house 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, not 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.

Rendering in Ashley has no rate per square metre. What is already on the wall decides the price. The platform. Bungalow walls come off a tower. A chalet gable round a dormer, or a two storey semi, keeps its scaffold while every coat cures. Under the work at height rules, that scaffold is costed as its own item.

What comes off first. Dash on an Ashley wall that has lost its grip on the block behind has to be hacked back to a sound background before anything new goes on. That hidden work sets the hours, and the only way to measure it is to tap the whole wall.

The system. Traditional sand and cement with a new dash, a monocouche through-coloured render, or a silicone thin coat, with or without insulation behind, each price and behave differently. Beads, bellcast and stop ends are part of every system.

Exposure. On the south west walls in Ashley, driven rain tests every crack and bead, so the detailing at sills and openings matters more than the colour.

Ask each renderer which system they are quoting, how many coats, whether they are taking the old render off or going over it, and what happens to the sills and pipework.

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.

On an Ashley house the sensible ways round it 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.

For rendering we travel 8.9 miles from Boscombe to Ashley, and Barton on Sea, Hordle, New Milton and Bashley as well, all in New Forest District Council's patch. The person who taps each wall and prices the render is Thomas Hannen, owner of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Ashley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

A verified customer left us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Nothing is charged for the site visit, nor for the written quote that itemises the job.

Most repairs in Ashley need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.