Rendering in Ashmore, and when not to render
Some walls up here were built to be looked at rather than covered, and putting render over one of those is a change of appearance rather than a repair.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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In Ashmore, rendering starts with the wall. Where a cottage already carries render, a cracked or hollow patch is cut back and made good in lime so the wall keeps breathing, and a failed cement coat comes off and goes back in lime. A faced wall that has never been rendered is another matter: covering it changes the look of a building in a conservation area, so that is a planning question first. Damp plaster on the inside of the wall is a plastering repair, once the cause outside is dealt with.
Rendering questions in Ashmore split between walls that already carry a render and walls that do not. On the first, the coat has cracked, gone hollow or greened over and wants putting right. On the second, a cold, wet, bare wall raises the question of whether covering it would solve the problem.
The first is straightforward work. The second deserves an honest answer before anybody quotes it, because render is not a cure for a wet wall and on the wrong building it makes things worse. We come out to Ashmore, look at what you have, and put the options in writing with the hack off, the beads, each coat, the scaffold and the waste itemised.
The work
Repairing render up here, and knowing when to leave a wall alone
The survey of an Ashmore wall starts with tapping. Sound render rings and blown render sounds hollow, and the hollow percentage decides the job. On an unrendered wall the survey is different: the pointing, the copings, the drips over openings and where the ground sits against the wall, because those are what is making it wet rather than the absence of a coat.
Lime repair and lime render. A period wall in Ashmore built pre-1919 is breathable by design. Water gets in and leaves through the face. A haired lime basecoat, a soft lime topcoat and limewash or a breathable mineral paint keep that working. Patching an existing lime render is often a day or two rather than a full elevation, because new lime knits into old in a way cement never does.
Taking cement off. Where somebody has put sand and cement over an old wall, the moisture ends up trapped, the coat cracks and blows, and damp turns up on the inside face. It comes off carefully, not with a breaker, then we clean down, prepare, stabilise anything friable, cut a key where one is needed and let the wall dry before a new coat goes near it.
Modern systems where they belong. On a post-war cavity wall in Ashmore a silicone thin coat works well: primer, a mesh and scrim reinforced basecoat, then a through-coloured topcoat scraped or floated to a texture off a sample board. Monocouche suits a long plain elevation, sand and cement is still right for garages, and older acrylic and polymer rich finishes are the crazed ones. On a cold cavity wall EWI, external wall insulation with a render carrier, is worth pricing, with Part L setting the thermal standard.
Beads and the base. A bellcast bead throws water clear of the plinth instead of letting it wick up behind the coat, stop beads finish the render at reveals and verges, and stainless goes anywhere the wall gets wet, because galvanised beads rust and stain the face. On a lime job the edges are often run by hand, which is slower and looks right on an old building.
Cracking, dash and staining. A crack that takes a coin lets water behind and the coat will delaminate around it over a winter. Pebbledash and Tyrolean hide cracking completely, so a dashed wall gets tapped, not just looked at. Green algae on a shaded elevation is a cleaning job unless the wall behind it is wet, and spalling at the base usually means the render is going into the ground.
How it runs
Renewing render on an older wall, start to finish
On an older house the render may be lime over stone, flint or brick, and where a solid wall needs to breathe, that settles which system goes on. Thomas taps across each elevation before pricing, as the hollow areas set the size of the job. His quote shows the scaffold, protecting windows and planting, getting the existing wall ready, the system and the number of coats, beads and stop ends, and making good.
In Ashmore the scaffold is set so the lane stays usable, and on an exposed corner it is tied in and sheeted. The old render comes off, each coat goes on and is finished in turn, and lime coats are left to cure under hessian, out of the wind and frost. Waste goes daily. If the wall behind is loose or cracked once exposed, you get pictures and a price before we go on.
Ashmore is inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, has twenty six listed entries, and the village is covered by the Ashmore Conservation Area (designated 1993), so how a wall looks matters. Because the whole parish is in the National Landscape, rendering or cladding a house needs planning permission anywhere in Ashmore, while a like-for-like repair stays maintenance, and on a listed building the render is protected and needs listed building consent. We check your address with Dorset Council before quoting.
Cost
What sets the price of render up on the Chase
Render is never priced by the square metre in Ashmore. The wall itself decides the work. Taking off the old. Sound brick takes new render without fuss. Render that has blown, or pebbledash that has let go of the background, must be hacked off first, and none of that shows from the lane. We tap every elevation before we price.
A wall that breathes. Old stone or flint in Ashmore has to dry outwards. Cement render or a plastic-rich silicone thin coat on it holds the moisture in and drives damp inside. Lime, put on in several coats, is slower and priced accordingly. Monocouche, coloured right through, suits newer blockwork.
Wind and frost. On a high, open site a cracked coat lets water in and frost widens the crack. A bellcast bead and a good drip at the foot of the render keep water off the plinth.
Scaffold. In Ashmore, a wall set back from the lane, a two storey gable on an exposed corner that needs tying and sheeting, and a back wall reached through a garden gate each need a different platform. The work at height rules are why it is itemised.
Compare other quotes on the system and number of coats, whether old render is removed or covered, whether beads, bellcast and stop ends are in, and how sills and pipework are handled.
If it has started to come away
Blown or cracked render letting the weather in
Tap a patch of render on your Ashmore house. If it sounds hollow, or a crack is wide enough for a coin, rain is getting behind it, and a hard frost up here will prise it off. Keep people clear of any loose area over a door or path.
Ring us; please do not wait on the form. We take down what is loose, sheet the wall if rain is coming, and find out how far the blown area runs before we price the elevation. A wall that has opened up is better seen before the cold than after it. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If nobody answers, we phone you back at the earliest chance.
Worth knowing
Rendering a wall that has never been rendered
Should an unrendered wall be rendered to cure damp? Usually not. If a wall is cold or damp, covering the outside rarely fixes the cause. Water gets into a faced wall through open joints, a failed coping, a missing drip over a window or ground heaped against the base, and each of those is cheaper to put right than an elevation of render. Cover it instead and you have hidden the fault, not removed it.
The second reason is the local one. Ashmore has a conservation area and a landscape designation over it, and both are about how buildings look. A faced wall that has never been covered is part of that, so rendering it is a change of appearance that gets considered rather than assumed. There are cases where the answer is yes, usually an exposed elevation that has been repointed and is still wet through, and there we would use lime rather than anything modern so the wall keeps working. But it is a decision to take with the council in the loop, and after the pointing, the copings and the ground levels have been dealt with, not before.
Who you are dealing with
Who renders your walls
We render in Ashmore, Fontmell Magna, Compton Abbas, Tollard Royal and the other villages on the Chase, a 19.7 mile drive from our Boscombe base. Planning and building control sit with Dorset Council.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales with the company number 15471719, does the work, and its owner Thomas Hannen taps your walls and prices them himself. A verified customer has rated our work 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit is free, as is the written, itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Ashmore, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ashmore?
Most repairs in Ashmore 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.
| Question | In Ashmore |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Ashmore. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Ashmore Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Ashmore. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about rendering in Ashmore
Will rendering our wall stop it being damp?
Not on its own, and often not at all. Render covers a wall, it does not dry one. If water is coming in through open joints, a failed coping or ground piled against the base, those come first. Otherwise you have sealed the problem in.
Our render is soft and dusty in places. Is that failure?
Not necessarily: a lime render is meant to be softer than the wall and to weather slowly, which is how it protects what is behind it. Soft is normal, hollow is not. What we look for is whether it has parted from the background, and that is something you hear, not something you see.
Do you have to hack off the whole elevation?
Only what has let go. We tap the whole face and give you the figure, and the patching itself takes a day or two, not a fortnight. On a lime render, patching back into sound work is invisible once it has weathered, so there is rarely a reason to strip a wall that is mostly sound.
What exactly is the designation protecting?
How the building looks from outside. Repair in the same material and texture is maintenance. Covering a wall that was never covered, changing a thrown finish to a smooth one, or a colour that stands out are the changes it exists to consider, and they are worth asking about before anything is booked.
Is lime render suitable in an exposed spot like this?
Yes, and it has been for centuries. It wants protecting from frost and from drying too fast while it cures, which is a matter of timing and sheeting the scaffold, not a reason to use something harder. A hard coat on an exposed old wall fails sooner, not later.
Nearby, and next door
Rendering near Ashmore
Nearby places we also cover for rendering, with straight-line distances from Ashmore, and the other trades we offer in Ashmore itself.
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Our other trades in Ashmore
Rendering guides
Silicone, cement or lime: which render? Cracked render: which cracks matter Listed building consent for repointing and re-renderingEverything we do in Blandford Forum Rendering, all areas Every area we cover
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Ask before you cover a wall that has never been covered
Thomas comes out, looks at the wall, tells you honestly whether render is the answer and prices the work that is. The site visit and the written itemised quote are free.