Rendering in Ashley Heath
Gables, window panels and part-rendered elevations across Ashley Heath, St Leonards and St Ives, matched on a sample before anything is committed.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most houses in Ashley Heath are not fully rendered. They carry render on a gable, on the panels above and below the windows, or on one elevation only, with brick or tile hanging doing the rest. That makes matching, not covering, the real question.
A patch of new render next to twenty year old render is the thing people regret. The colour is easy to get close to and hard to get right, the texture is the part your eye actually reads, and a repair that stands out will stand out for the life of the wall.
So the conversation here is usually about how far to take the work: patch it, do the whole panel, or do the whole elevation. We tap the render, show you what is sound, put a sample up and let you decide with the numbers in front of you. The visit and the written itemised quote cost you nothing.
The work
Panels, gables and matching what is already there
Sounding and mapping. The survey is a light hammer over every rendered area, panel by panel. Hollow render has already parted from the background. We mark it, photograph it and measure it, and on a part-rendered house that map is what decides whether a panel is repaired or replaced.
Sample panels and matching. Before anything, a sample of the proposed texture and colour goes on the wall and stays there until you have seen it in morning and afternoon light. Texture first: a coarse float finish, a fine scraped one and a dry dash read completely differently at twenty feet, and getting that wrong is more obvious than being a shade out on the colour.
Patching and making good. Where the surrounding coat is stuck, we cut the failed area back to a straight edge, stabilise the backing, fill in with a matching mix and blend the texture out. Done on a panel bounded by a bead or a brick course it disappears. Done in the middle of an open gable it always shows a little, and we will say so before you spend the money.
Hacking off and rebuilding a panel. Hack off to the background, clean down, cut out anything loose or spalled, then a primer or a slurry key on dense block, then bead: angle beads on the corners, stop beads where render meets brick or a frame, and a bellcast at the base. Getting the new coat to finish flush with the old at those junctions is most of the skill.
The systems. Silicone thin coat, a mesh reinforced polymer basecoat under a flexible through-coloured topcoat, is our usual answer on the cavity blockwork here. Monocouche gives one thick through-coloured coat and suits new work and extensions. Traditional sand and cement, scratched and floated, still belongs on plinths, garages and boundary walls, and takes paint, dry dash or Tyrolean.
Pebbledash, cracking and staining. A dashed panel with a sound backing can be stabilised, patched and re-dashed to match the existing aggregate. Fine crazing is shrinkage. A crack out of a window corner is movement. Green streaking under a gutter is algae and wants washing rather than rendering.
Render over external wall insulation. On a part-rendered house EWI is more complicated than on a plain one, because the board builds the wall out and every junction with brick, tile hanging, a sill or a soffit has to be re-detailed with a render carrier or a mesh basecoat. It can be done well. It cannot be done cheaply.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access and scaffold, protection, preparation of the existing wall, the system and number of coats, beads and stop ends, and making good on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Renewing render that is already there is maintenance. Rendering a brick elevation that never was, or changing the finish, is a planning question and the Planning Portal sets out where the line falls. Ashley Heath has no conservation area and one listed entry, so on an ordinary house this is your decision. Renewing a whole elevation brings Part L and building control in, because the wall counts as a thermal element.
Cost
What decides the price of a rendering job
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 single storey gable off a tower, a chalet bungalow with a dormer, and a two storey flank tight to a boundary fence 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.
If it has started to come away
Render that has blown or cracked open
Ring rather than use the form. A section that sounds hollow when you tap it, or a crack you can get a coin into, is letting water behind the render and the frost does the rest. We make the loose area safe, sheet it if the weather is against us, and price the elevation once we can see how far the blown area actually goes. A panel that has started to bulge above a front door is the one we come and take down first. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Deciding how far to take a part-rendered elevation
When only part of a house is rendered, every repair is a judgement about where to stop. There are three honest answers and the right one depends on the wall, not on what is easiest to sell.
Stop at the failure if the render around it is genuinely sound and the patch is bounded by something: a bead, a brick course, a corner, the underside of a sill. Your eye reads edges, so a repair that finishes at a line looks deliberate and a repair that fades out in the middle of a panel looks like a repair. Do the whole panel if more than about a third of it is hollow, because you will be back otherwise, and a panel is a natural unit that can be finished corner to corner in one go. Do the whole elevation when the coat is the same age everywhere and has started to fail in more than one place, since the rest is not far behind and the scaffold is already up.
What we would push back on is the middle option nobody needs: rendering over sound brickwork to make a patch easier to hide. That adds a maintenance liability to a wall that did not have one. If a firm quotes you for covering more of the house than is failing, ask them to show you the hollow areas they found and where they are. On a part-rendered house that is a fair question and it has a straight answer.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Ashley Heath, St Leonards, St Ives, Ringwood and the BH24 addresses around them, under Dorset 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.
Questions
Ashley Heath questions we get asked
Will a repair match the render we already have?
Close, and closer if it stops at an edge. We match texture before colour, because texture is what your eye reads from the pavement, and we put a sample on the wall so you can judge it in daylight. A patch bounded by a bead, a corner or a brick course disappears far better than one that fades out mid panel.
Should we render the brickwork as well while you are here?
We would usually say no. Sound brickwork needs nothing doing to it, and rendering it adds a surface that will need maintaining in thirty years. There are good reasons to do it, mainly insulation or a genuinely poor wall, but making a patch easier to hide is not one of them.
How much of a panel has to be blown before you replace it?
As a rule of thumb, about a third. Below that a patch is honest work. Above it you are patching a coat that is coming away everywhere and you will be back, so it is cheaper in the end to take the panel off and put a new mesh reinforced basecoat and topcoat on it.
Can you change the colour of just one elevation?
You can, and sometimes it looks well, but it needs deciding at the sample stage rather than halfway through. Where render wraps a corner onto a face you were not planning to touch, the join has to land somewhere sensible, and that is usually a corner bead rather than the middle of a wall.
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Get a sample on the wall before you decide how far to go
Thomas maps the hollow areas, shows you where a repair should stop, and puts the patching, the panels and the access on separate lines of a free written itemised quote.