Rendering in Bryanston
A village of near identical houses, where the difficult part of a render job is making one wall match the ones either side of it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
The hard part in a village of near identical houses is not putting render on, it is making one house match the four either side of it. A patch will never blend into a weathered wall, so the honest answer is usually a whole elevation in one go, with a sample panel agreed before we start.
The calls come in three shapes. A hollow patch found by knocking on the wall. A crack at a window or where an extension meets the original house. And a wall that has gone patchy and green on the shaded side while the neighbours look fine, which is nearly always down to what is dripping on it.
We tap the whole elevation before we price anything, because hollow areas are the difference between a morning and a fortnight. Then you get it in writing, with access, preparation, the system, the beads and the making good on separate lines. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
The work
Render we put on around the village
Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Scratch coat, float coat, then a smooth finish, a dry dash thrown on while the coat is green, or a Tyrolean flicked on. Most of the older rendered walls here carry one of these, and matching one means matching the aggregate size and colour as much as the trowel work. We mix and hang a sample panel and let you look at it dry.
Silicone thin coat. Primer, a polymer basecoat with mesh bedded into it, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to an even texture. Flexible, water shedding and colour stable, which makes it the sensible choice on the later blockwork houses and extensions. Beads and stop ends at every reveal and a bellcast so water leaves the base of the wall.
Monocouche. A single through-coloured coat put on thick and scraped back the day after. Good on a plain elevation with a sound background and a settled week of weather, poor on a wall that is already a patchwork.
Lime render. Solid walls with no cavity, and the older cottages have them, work by absorbing rain and drying out through the same face. That needs a soft breathable coat, so lime in two or three coats, hair gauged in the base. A hard cement coat on one of those leaves the moisture trapped and pushes the damp inside.
Tapping and hacking off. Blown render has parted from the wall behind it. Tapping the whole elevation is how you find out how much, and it is the number that decides between cutting out panels and stripping the lot. Nobody can price it off a photograph from the lane.
Cracking, delamination and staining. Fine crazing is shrinkage and cosmetic. A crack you can get a coin into is movement or a bead that has failed and wants opening up and reinforcing. Algae, green film and black staining come off with a soft wash, and we say when a surface is past cleaning and needs recoating.
Render over external wall insulation. Insulation board fixed to the wall as a render carrier, then mesh, basecoat and topcoat over it. It changes the thermal performance, and Approved Document L sets what a renovated wall is expected to reach. It also thickens the wall at every reveal, so on a uniform row it changes how the house sits next to its neighbours.
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.
Renewing an existing render in the same finish is maintenance. The village sits in the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston conservation area, where appearance is controlled, so a change of material or a noticeably different colour on a road frontage is a planning question rather than a repair, and the listed entries near here, which are concentrated on the school estate rather than in the housing, need listed building consent. We check the address first.
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. An estate cottage in a terrace, a detached house set back behind a hedge and a two storey extension with a conservatory under the gable each want a different platform before any material is ordered. 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. Get anything with bare background showing sheeted before the next wet spell, because a wall that has soaked adds drying days to the front of the job. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Why one house in a matching row is the difficult job
Render weathers. A wall that went on twenty years ago has taken sun on one side, rain on another and a slow film of dirt everywhere, and its colour now is nothing like the colour it left the bag as. So when one house in a row of identical ones needs work, the new material is the easy part and the match is the problem. A patch mixed to the original specification will read as a bright square for years. A patch mixed to look right today will drift as it dries and again as it weathers.
There are three honest ways through it and we will talk you through all of them. Take the whole elevation off and put one system across it, which costs more now and is the only version that genuinely matches itself. Patch and then coat the full elevation with one thin topcoat, which evens the colour without the cost of a strip. Or patch, accept the difference and let it settle over a few seasons, which is fine on a rear wall and rarely fine on a frontage. What we will not do is promise an invisible patch on a weathered wall, because nobody can do that and the argument comes later.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Bryanston, Blandford St Mary, Durweston and the villages along the Stour, broadly 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
Bryanston questions we get asked
Can you match the render on the rest of our row?
We can get very close, and we will show you rather than tell you. A sample panel goes up on the wall itself, in the aggregate and colour we intend to use, and you look at it dry and in daylight before we order anything. What nobody can do is make a fresh patch invisible against twenty years of weathering on the wall around it.
Is it cheaper to patch or to do the whole wall?
Patching is cheaper today and often more expensive over five years, because the hollow areas next to the ones you fixed tend to go next. We tap the whole elevation and tell you what proportion is loose. Once it is a large share of the wall, one system across the whole elevation is the better value.
If we want a different colour, who has to be asked?
It does not stop you, it means somebody gets asked. Inside the conservation area appearance is what is controlled, so like for like renewal is maintenance while a new material or a markedly different colour on a visible elevation is a change worth clearing first. It is a short conversation if you have it before the scaffold goes up.
Will the scaffold have to stay up between coats?
Longer than the days we are actually on it. Render is a wet trade: the basecoat has to cure before the topcoat goes on, and cold or wet weather stretches the wait. The platform has to stay up through that, which is why it is priced as its own line rather than folded into a rate.
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See the sample before you commit to the wall
Thomas taps the elevation, mixes a sample panel for the match and itemises the work line by line. The visit and the written quote are free.