Rendering in Bearwood, cavity walls and gables
Post-war cavity walls throughout, which takes the breathability argument off the table and makes this a decision about finish rather than fabric.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Nothing in Bearwood was built before the war, so the walls here are cavity walls with a modern damp proof course. That is the easy end of rendering: a silicone thin coat or a monocouche will sit happily on a background like that, and none of the breathability arguments that tie up an old house apply.
What we mostly get asked for here is appearance. A dashed gable that has gone streaky. A rendered panel above a bay that no longer matches the brick. A whole front elevation somebody wants taking from tired painted render to a clean scraped finish that never needs painting again.
There is a second group of calls too, and it is the one worth being honest about. Somebody has damp inside and has been told to render the outside. Sometimes that is the answer. Often it is not. We tap the wall, look at the ground levels and the base of the elevation, and tell you what the render will and will not fix before anyone prices it.
The work
Gables, panels and full elevations on the estates
Checking the background. Every quote starts with a mallet over the wall. On houses of this age the render is usually still bonded, and where a coat sounds hollow it is normally around a bay, a gable verge or a spot where water has been running off a blocked gutter for years. We chalk what is loose so you can see it.
Silicone thin coat. The workhorse system here. A mesh reinforced basecoat over the prepared background, a primer, then a silicone topcoat scraped or floated to the texture you pick. It flexes with the wall, sheds water, resists algae better than masonry paint and never needs repainting.
Monocouche. A through-coloured polymer modified render applied in one build and scraped back the following day. The colour runs through the coat rather than sitting on top of it, so a chip does not show as a white scar. It suits the plain gables and long elevations on the newer closes.
Dashed and Tyrolean panels. A good number of the 1960s and 70s houses on the edge of the estate carry dashed panels between brickwork. Those can be cut out and re-dashed, or the whole panel can be taken off and brought up flush in a thin coat system so the elevation reads as one surface instead of two.
Hacking off and making good. Where a coat has genuinely blown it comes off with a breaker to a firm edge. Cavity walls give up their render easily, which is a mercy. The blockwork or brick behind is made good, given a key, and anything friable is stabilised with a primer.
Cracking and delamination. A vertical crack over a lintel or under a sill is usually movement rather than failure, and it is cut out, meshed and made good. Crazing across a sand and cement coat is cosmetic. A crack you can get a coin into is letting water behind and the frost will widen it every winter you leave it.
Beads and bellcast. Angle beads at the corners, stop beads at the reveals and a bellcast bead at the base so water leaves the wall instead of tracking back under the render. On a house with a modern damp proof course the render must stop clear above it, which is the detail most often got wrong on a cheap job.
Render over external wall insulation. Where the cavity is narrow and the heating bills say so, insulation board or a render carrier can be fixed to the outside face and rendered over. EWI is thermal work as much as render work, so it is quoted and detailed differently.
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.
Rendering a wall that is already rendered is maintenance rather than development, and there is no conservation area in Bearwood and nothing listed among the housing, so the finish and the colour are your choice. If you are covering brickwork that has never been rendered on a house that has been extended before, it is worth a check that permitted development still applies. the council keeps the list for the designated areas. Insulation behind a render brings building control in and Approved Document L sets the Part L standard.
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 detached house with a drive and a side gate, a mid terrace where everything comes through the house, and a two storey gable 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. We are four miles away, so a Bearwood address is normally looked at within a day or two. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
A cavity wall makes the render decision simpler
Every house here sits on a cavity wall with a damp proof course, and that changes the argument. People worry about render trapping moisture because a solid pre-1919 wall has no cavity and no barrier, so it dries out through its own face. Put a plastic rich coat on a period wall of that kind and the moisture has nowhere to go. On a post-war cavity wall the outer leaf is a rain screen, and a silicone or monocouche system is entirely at home on it.
So on this estate the choice is genuinely about finish: texture, colour and how much maintenance you want, rather than a breathability question with a right and a wrong answer. It also means a render job here rarely turns into something bigger once the scaffold is up.
The one thing to be careful of is the opposite mistake. Render is not a damp treatment. If you have a damp patch inside a cavity wall house, the usual causes are a bridged cavity, ground levels raised above the damp course, a leaking gutter or a cracked sill, and covering the outside in a new coat hides the symptom rather than the cause. We would rather find that at the visit than after you have paid for an elevation.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Bearwood, Kinson, West Howe, Canford Heath and out towards Merley, broadly BH11, under Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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
Bearwood questions we get asked
Will rendering the outside stop the damp inside my house?
Only if the render is what is letting the water in. On a cavity wall the usual culprits are raised ground levels, a bridged cavity or a leaking gutter. We check those first, because a new coat over the top of one of them just hides it.
Can you render just the gable and leave the rest in brick?
Yes, and it is a common request here. The render is stopped on a bead at the corner and at the verge so the edge looks deliberate rather than accidental. The join is the part that decides whether it looks right.
Silicone or monocouche, which should I pick?
Both are through-coloured and neither needs painting. Monocouche goes on in one build and has a heavier, more traditional grain. Silicone is a thinner topcoat over a meshed basecoat and copes better with a wall that moves. We will say which suits your elevation.
How much disruption is there for a full elevation?
A scaffold goes up, the wall is covered for several days and there is noise on the hack off day. Windows are masked and the site is swept every evening. Most people carry on living normally throughout.
Can dashed panels be made flush with the rest of the wall?
Usually. The dash comes off, the background is levelled and the whole elevation is brought up in a thin coat system so it reads as one surface. A bigger job than patching the panel, and the one people are happiest with afterwards.
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Get the elevation tapped and priced properly
Thomas comes out, checks the background and the base detail and prices the system in writing line by line. The visit and the quote are free.