Rendering in Downton, terraces and party lines
Close to a quarter of the housing here is terraced, and on a terrace your render stops where somebody else's wall begins.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
On a terrace the elevation you are rendering is not a whole wall, it is a slice of one. Where the new coat stops, how it meets the neighbour's finish, and who is told before it starts all matter as much as the system going on.
The usual calls are a front elevation cracked along the line of a bay, a rear wall gone hollow after wet winters, and a mid terrace where one house has been rendered, the next has not, and the join is letting water in.
None of those are difficult jobs. What makes them different from a detached house is the boundary. The free site visit is a survey with a hammer: we tap the elevation, work out where the render can be stopped and what the wall behind is, then write it up with the hack off, the beads, each coat, the scaffold and the waste on separate lines.
The work
Rendering a house that is joined to two others
Where the render stops. On a mid terrace the coat has to finish somewhere, and the honest place is the party line with a proper stop bead and a sealed joint, not a feathered edge run onto next door's brickwork. A stop bead gives a clean line that can be maintained and a joint that can be resealed later. It is the detail that decides whether a terrace render job looks deliberate or looks like it ran out.
Tapping and hacking off. Sound render rings, blown render sounds hollow, and only the hollow comes off. We clean down, prepare, stabilise a dusty background with a primer and cut a key where the face is too smooth. Spalled arrises are cut out and made good. Where a third of a face is loose the whole elevation comes off.
Lime on the older houses. Around a quarter of the housing here is pre-1919, and those are solid walls that stay dry by breathing. A plastic rich topcoat leaves moisture trapped and blows the coat off in sheets within a few winters. Those elevations get a haired lime basecoat, a soft topcoat and limewash or a breathable mineral paint. On a terrace this matters twice over, because a sealed coat on your wall can push damp sideways into the party wall.
Modern systems on the later stock. On a post-war cavity wall a silicone thin coat is the usual answer: primer, a mesh and scrim reinforced basecoat, then a through-coloured topcoat scraped or floated to a texture off a sample board. Monocouche suits a long plain elevation, sand and cement still does for outbuildings, and older acrylic and polymer rich finishes are the crazed ones.
Insulation on a joined house. EWI is possible on a terrace but it needs thinking about, because external wall insulation board and a render carrier make your wall thicker than the two beside it. The step at the party line has to be detailed, the reveals and sills extended and the eaves checked, with Part L setting the thermal standard. On an end terrace with a big blank gable it is often a straightforward and worthwhile job.
Cracking, dash and staining. A crack that takes a coin lets water behind and the coat delaminates around it over a winter. Pebbledash and Tyrolean hide cracking entirely, which is why a dashed terrace front gets tapped rather than looked at. Green algae and staining down a shaded flank is a cleaning job unless the wall behind is wet, and on a terrace that is often a shared downpipe rather than the render.
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.
Planning here is Wiltshire Council. The village sits inside its own conservation area and carries 107 listed entries, which is a great many for a place this size, so the odds that your address has a control on it are higher than usual. rendering an external wall on an unlisted house outside the boundary is normally permitted development where the new finish is similar in appearance to the old; inside the boundary appearance is the point, and on a listed building the render is protected in its own right. Work on or against a shared wall can also engage the party wall rules, which means telling your neighbour in writing before it starts rather than on the morning.
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 terrace front over a pavement needs the footway managed and the scaffold licensed, an end terrace gable wants a full lift, and a rear elevation reached only through the house has to be hand loaded through a hallway. 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. On a terrace a failed joint at the party line puts water into two houses rather than one, so that is the one worth ringing about rather than watching through a winter. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Your render stops at somebody else's wall
Close to a quarter of the housing here is terraced, and that changes a render job in ways a detached house never has to think about. Your elevation is a slice of a longer wall built as one. The neighbours' finishes may be brick, painted brick, old cement or nothing. Whatever you put on has to stop cleanly against theirs, and that stop is a detail rather than an afterthought.
Three things follow. Tell the neighbours before the scaffold arrives, because the platform usually oversails a boundary and the courtesy costs nothing while the argument costs weeks. Check whether the work touches a shared wall, since anything cut into or fixed onto a party wall brings the procedure into it and that runs on notice periods. And think about the line: a render that stops halfway across a shared bay, or steps forward by the thickness of an insulation board without a detail, is what people mean when they say a rendered terrace looks wrong. Where two or three neighbours want the same work, one scaffold run is cheaper for everyone and it is the only way the elevation ends up looking like one building.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Downton, Charlton All Saints, Redlynch, Morgans Vale and the villages along the Avon south of Salisbury, broadly SP5, with Wiltshire 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
Downton questions we get asked
Can you render just our house in a terrace?
Yes. The coat is stopped at the party line on a stop bead with a sealed joint, giving a clean vertical edge that can be maintained. What we would not do is feather it across the boundary onto the neighbour's brickwork, because that cracks along the line within a couple of years.
Do we have to tell our neighbours?
You should, and sometimes you must. Scaffold usually oversails a boundary, and anything cut into or fixed onto a shared wall brings the party wall procedure in, which runs on written notice. Doing it early keeps the job on schedule.
Would it be cheaper to do several houses at once?
Almost always, because the scaffold and the setting up are the fixed part and get shared. It also settles the appearance question, since the whole run gets the same texture and colour. Ask how long it takes to arrange and the answer is weeks rather than days, so it needs organising ahead.
The house next door is rendered and ours is not. Should we match it?
Only if the walls are the same construction. A matched appearance on two different backgrounds is how a solid walled cottage ends up with a sealed modern coat on it. We look at both walls and tell you whether the same system is honestly right for yours.
Is a listing likely on a house like ours?
More likely here than in most villages, because there are 107 listed entries in the parish. It costs nothing to search the address on the national list before you plan the job, and it saves a great deal if the answer turns out to be yes.
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Get the elevation and the party line priced properly
Thomas comes out, taps the wall, works out where the render should stop and prices the hack off, the system and the scaffold line by line. The visit and the written quote are free.