Rendering in Barton on Sea

Tapping first. Sound render answers dead, blown render drums. On a salty wall the drumming often follows a line of corroding beads rather than a crack, so we work the arrises and the sills as carefully as the open wall. The chalk marks set the scope.

Hacking off. Render that has parted from the background comes off to the block or brick. The wall is cleaned down, anything friable stabilised, salts brushed off, and the background left to dry before a new basecoat goes on. Nothing is skimmed over a hollow area.

Silicone thin coat. A polymer basecoat with a full mesh, a primer, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. On this coast that is usually the right answer: the colour is in the material so there is no paint film to blow off, it sheds driven rain, and it washes down.

Monocouche. One through-coloured material in two passes, scraped back the next day. Handsome and low maintenance, and it wants a sound even background, so it suits a newer wall better than a much-repaired one.

Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Most of the original render on the late 1950s and early 1960s stock is a traditional scratch and float, often dashed or given a Tyrolean flick. All repairable, and matched from a sample panel on your own wall.

Beads, bellcast and stop ends. This is where a coastal render is won or lost. Beads go in stainless rather than galvanised, because salt gets into galvanising and the rust expands and pushes the render off along the edge. A bellcast throws water clear at the foot, stop beads finish at the soffit and the verge, and every sill gets a proper end stop.

Cracking, delamination and staining. Map crazing is a surface fault, a crack from an opening is movement, and frost finishes off either one. Salt keeps a wall damp between showers, so algae comes back faster here than inland and is treated rather than blasted, because a lance takes the face off a thin coat.

Render over external wall insulation. With EWI the render becomes the weather face of the whole system, over a render carrier board or the insulation itself, with a mesh basecoat and a thin coat over it. Beads, sills and pipes are all reset to the new thickness, and on an exposed wall the mesh runs the full elevation rather than only at the openings. It is a thermal upgrade worth pricing while the access is already there.

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 clifftop bungalow elevation, a chalet gable with a dormer in it and a two storey block on Marine Drive all need a different way in. 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.

A house on the clifftop here is about a mile from open water with no hill, no woodland and no other buildings in the way, and the wet weather arrives from the south west. That puts these walls near the top of the exposure scale, which is not a figure of speech: BS 8104 is the code that grades a wall for wind-driven rain, and it is what a render should be specified against on this road. It also explains why the seaward elevation of a bungalow can be shot while the road side looks almost new.

Two practical things follow. Choose a through-coloured finish rather than a rendered wall that has to be painted, because a paint film on an exposed coastal wall is a maintenance job for ever and a chip lets salt water in behind it. And expect wind to move the programme. Render cannot be applied in a strong breeze, a sheeted scaffold up here behaves like a sail and has to be dropped when it blows, and coats need protecting while they cure. A quote written as though the weather will not interfere was not written by somebody who has worked on this clifftop.

We cover Barton on Sea, Milford on Sea, New Milton, Hordle and Ashley, 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.