Rendering in Bashley, New Forest
Most of the render here is around thirty years old, which is exactly the age at which you have to decide between recoating it and taking it off.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Bashley is newer than most of the places around it and about four homes in ten went up from the mid 1980s onwards. Their render is now roughly thirty years old, and thirty years is the point where a painted sand and cement face starts to craze and the decision becomes recoat or replace.
Those are two very different jobs and two very different prices, and what separates them is not how the wall looks. It is whether the render is still stuck. A tired, chalky, crazed elevation that is sound behind can be prepared, reinforced and recoated. A clean-looking one that drums has to come off.
Four in ten homes here are bungalows too, so a lot of this is a long single storey elevation that a tower will reach. We tap the whole wall, tell you which of the two jobs you have, and put it in a written itemised quote. Free, along with the visit.
The work
Recoating what is sound, replacing what is not
Sounding it first. A knuckle over the whole elevation. Sound render answers dead, blown render drums, and the drumming carries further than the crazing you can see. That survey is the difference between the two jobs, so it happens before any price is written.
Recoating a sound render. Where the existing render is stuck and only the surface has gone, it is cleaned down, stabilised where chalky, primed, and given a mesh reinforced basecoat and a through-coloured thin coat over it. A far smaller job than a replacement, and no paint film to fail again.
Hacking off. Where the render has parted from the background it comes off to the block, the wall is cleaned down, friable areas are stabilised and the background is left to dry before a new basecoat goes on. Nothing gets coated over a hollow area, whatever it costs to say so.
Silicone thin coat. Polymer basecoat, full mesh, primer, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. On the block walls of this period it is the usual answer, because it flexes with the wall and sheds water.
Monocouche. One through-coloured material in two passes, scraped back the next day. Even and crisp on a good background, and less forgiving of a patched wall than a basecoat and topcoat system is.
Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. The traditional scratch and float, dashed aggregate and machine-flicked Tyrolean all turn up here, often as a dry dash panel between brick. All are repairable and the texture is matched off a sample panel first.
Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast at the foot throws water clear of the wall below, stop beads finish the render cleanly at a soffit or a corner, and angle beads keep a reveal straight. On a recoat the old beads are checked and replaced where they have started to rust.
Cracking, delamination and algae. Fine map crazing is the classic thirty year old surface fault and it is what a recoat is for. A crack from a window head is movement. Frost turns either into a blown panel. Algae on a shaded elevation is treated and cleaned at low pressure rather than blasted.
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. It is worth pricing alongside a replacement, because the access is the same.
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.
Bashley sits inside the New Forest National Park, so the National Park Authority is the planning authority here rather than the district council, and the boundary runs close by. the National Park property map will tell you which side a property is on, and the National Park keeps the boundaries for the heritage designations. Only a handful of buildings in the area are listed, and on one of those a change of render needs consent whatever it looks like. Where a wall is being insulated rather than simply recoated, Approved Document L applies and building control is involved.
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 bungalow elevation, a chalet gable with a dormer and a two storey detached wall set back behind a hedge 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. If a crazed elevation has started to shed flakes rather than just chalk, that is delamination beginning and it is worth looking at now. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Inside the National Park, rendering is not permitted development
This is the one that catches people out, and it costs money when it does. Ordinarily a homeowner can clad or render the outside of a house without a planning application. In a National Park that permission is removed. Bashley is inside the National Park, which counts as article 2(3) land for planning purposes, and Part 1 of the permitted development order specifically excludes cladding the exterior with stone, artificial stone, pebble dash, render, timber, plastic or tiles on land like this. Rendering a house that is not already rendered is therefore a planning application, not a free choice.
What it does not stop is maintenance. Repairing a render that is already there, or replacing a tired one with a similar finish, is repair rather than development and does not need an application. The line falls between putting back what was there and changing what the house looks like, and a change of material or a noticeably different colour can land on the wrong side of it. So if you are thinking of rendering a brick elevation here, check the boundary and speak to the National Park before you take quotes rather than after. A firm that tells you rendering never needs permission is describing a house somewhere else.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Bashley, New Milton, Ashley, Sway and Wootton, broadly BH25, under the New Forest National Park Authority. 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
Bashley questions we get asked
Our render is crazed all over. Does it all have to come off?
Not if it is still stuck. Crazing is a surface fault and a sound wall can be cleaned down, stabilised, primed and given a mesh basecoat and a thin coat over the top. What decides it is the tap test, not how bad the surface looks from the drive.
Do we need permission to render a brick elevation?
You will need planning permission for it. Inside the National Park the usual right to clad or render a house is withdrawn, so it is an application rather than something you can just book in. Worth finding out before you commission drawings or take quotes.
Is there much saving on a bungalow?
Per elevation, generally yes, because a single storey wall can often be worked from a tower rather than a full scaffold and the access line is smaller. There is more wall than people expect around a sprawling bungalow though, so the areas even out more than you would think.
What happens to the old beads on a recoat?
They get checked and replaced where they have gone. A bead that has started to rust will push the new render off along the edge within a couple of years, so leaving them in to save a bit is the wrong economy. It is a line on the quote.
How long does a recoat take compared with a replacement?
A recoat is usually a matter of days on a normal elevation, because nothing is being removed. A replacement adds the hacking off, the clearing away and the drying time before anything new goes on, so it is a longer job and the scaffold stands for more of it.
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Find out whether yours is a recoat or a replacement
Thomas comes out, taps the whole elevation and tells you which of the two jobs you are looking at, in writing. The visit and the quote are free.