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.
Not every wall wants rendering. Where a wall was built as a faced wall and has never been covered, a render is a change to the look of the building, and in a village with its own conservation area that is a planning question before it is a price.
Two conversations come up more than any others. Somebody with a rendered elevation that has cracked, gone hollow or greened over and wants it put right. And somebody with a cold, wet, unrendered wall wondering 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, 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. Tapping first, always. 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 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 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 rather than 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
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.
The village has its own conservation area and 26 listed entries, and it sits inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, so appearance carries weight here. Outside the boundary rendering an external wall on an unlisted house is normally permitted development where the new finish matches the appearance of the old. Inside it, covering a faced wall or changing a texture is a planning matter rather than a repair, and on a listed building the render is protected fabric needing listed building consent. We look the address up with Dorset Council before quoting anything that changes how the building looks.
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 cottage on the green wants the scaffold set clear of the verge, a two storey elevation on an exposed corner needs it tied and sheeted, and a rear wall reached through a garden gate has to be hand loaded. 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. Up here a cracked coat and a hard frost do more in a fortnight than a wet autumn does in three months, so a wall that has opened up is worth looking at before the cold rather than after it. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Rendering a wall that has never been rendered
This is the question we are asked most often here, and the answer is usually no. 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 rather than removed it.
The second reason is the local one. The village 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 rather than before.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Ashmore, Fontmell Magna, Compton Abbas, Tollard Royal and the villages on the chase, broadly SP5 and DT11, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. 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
Ashmore questions we get asked
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 a sound rather than a texture.
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 people usually ask how long the patching takes: a day or two rather than 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 rather than a reason to use something harder. A hard coat on an exposed old wall fails sooner, not later.
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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.