Rendering in Bere Regis, listed and unlisted

Tapping the elevation. Render still bonded to the wall rings hard. Render that has blown and parted from the background sounds hollow. We sound every elevation, not just the one you rang about, and chalk the edges of the hollow areas so the size of the job is visible.

Hacking off and rebuilding. Blown render comes off back to sound masonry. Open joints are repointed, the background prepared, cleaned down and stabilised where it is dusty, then the new system goes on in coats: a mesh reinforced basecoat and a finish, or lime coats where the wall is period fabric.

Lime on solid walls. A pre-1919 wall has no cavity and was built breathable, taking moisture in and drying it back out through the face. Lime render keeps that route open, moves with the wall and can be patched invisibly. A plastic rich modern system on the same wall leaves the moisture trapped, and it comes out on the inside instead.

Taking old cement off. The common fault on the older cottages is a hard cement render put on decades ago. It cracks, water gets behind, and the cement will not let it out, so the wall stays wet and frost does the damage. It comes off by hand rather than with a breaker, and the wall is left to dry.

Silicone thin coat. The usual answer on the post-war cavity walled houses. A stabilising primer where the background is dusty, a mesh reinforced basecoat, then a through coloured silicone topcoat that sheds rain, cleans down and never needs painting.

Monocouche. A single thick through coloured coat, ruled off and scraped back to an even texture. Hard wearing, no painting, and it wants a stable background and planned day joints so no seam lands in the middle of a front wall.

Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Scratch coat, float coat and dash where the elevation already carries it, matched to a sample panel where the aggregate can still be had. Where it cannot, we say the patch will read differently rather than promise a match we cannot make.

Beads, bellcast and stop ends. Bellcast at the base to throw water clear above the damp proof course, stop beads at reveals and eaves, angle beads on corners, and a movement joint on a long elevation. On older fabric we hand form the arris, because a hard bead in a soft wall gives the render an edge to crack against.

Cracks, delamination and staining. Straight hairline cracking is shrinkage. A crack that steps or widens is movement behind it, and frost opens it further each winter. Spalled brick under an old cement skin gets cut out, and algae on a shaded wall lifts with a clean down and a treatment.

External wall insulation. Board fixed outside and rendered over, on a render carrier where the background will not take a direct fix. It lifts the thermal performance without losing a room, and it belongs on the modern housing rather than a listed frontage.

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 straight onto the street wants a platform that keeps the footway open, a semi with a side gate takes a narrow scaffold, and a farmhouse with open ground round it is the straightforward one. 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 conservation area draws a line on a map and everything inside it is treated the same way. Listing does not work like that. It attaches to individual buildings, and it can attach to one half of a pair, to a farmhouse but not its modern extension, or to a barn behind a house that is not itself listed. With 43 entries in a parish this size and no area designation at all, the pattern here is patchy by nature.

Two practical consequences. You cannot judge your own position by what a neighbour has been allowed to do: a modern render going up two doors along tells you nothing about your address. And listing covers more than the front elevation. It applies to the whole building, including the back and the outbuildings inside its curtilage, and the render on all of them. The check takes a minute, and the difference between a lime repair with consent and a modern system without it is the difference between a job that stands and one that comes off again.

We cover the village, Wool, Winterborne Kingston and the lanes towards Wareham, broadly BH20, under Dorset 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.