Rendering in Hangersley

Tapping the wall. Every price starts with sounding the elevation. Sound render answers dead, blown render drums, and the drumming runs further than the crack that made you ring. The chalk marks decide whether this is a repair or a whole elevation.

Hacking off. Where the render has parted from the background it comes off to brick or block, the wall is cleaned down, friable areas are stabilised and the background is left to dry. On soft old brickwork it comes off by hand rather than with a breaker.

Silicone thin coat. A polymer basecoat with a full mesh, a primer, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. It flexes with a block wall, sheds water and leaves no paint film to fail.

Monocouche. One through-coloured material in two passes, scraped back the next day. Even and crisp on a sound background, and a poor choice on a wall that has been patched repeatedly.

Lime on old solid walls. Where a building is period and pre-1919 the wall is solid and dries through its own face, so it wants a breathable lime render instead of a modern system that leaves moisture trapped behind it.

Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Traditional scratch and float render, dashed aggregate and machine-flicked Tyrolean are all repairable, and the texture is matched from a sample panel on your own wall before an elevation is committed.

Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast stops the render clear of wet ground, stop beads finish it at a soffit or a corner, and angle beads keep the reveals straight. On a low elevation within reach of stock we use a heavier duty bead and a tougher basecoat.

Cracking, delamination and algae. Map crazing is a surface fault, a crack from an opening is movement, and frost turns either into a blown panel. Under trees the wall stays damp and greens quickly, so it is treated and cleaned at low pressure rather than blasted.

Keeping the site secure. Fencing round the working area, materials and the mixer inside it overnight, sand and cement covered, the scaffold closed off at the bottom, and fresh render at low level hoarded until it has cured.

Render over external wall insulation. With EWI the render becomes 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 beads, sills and pipes reset to the new thickness.

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 set well back off the lane, a bungalow with a gravel drive and a two storey gable close to a verge 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.

Ponies, cattle and donkeys graze the open forest here under rights that are a great deal older than any of the houses, and a good many plots at Hangersley have no fence between the garden and the verge. For most trades that is a curiosity. On a render job it is a practical problem, because rendering means a scaffold, a mixer, water, open bags of sand and cement, and a wall that stays soft for hours after it has been worked. Animals lean on scaffolding, taste anything left in a bucket, and a pony that rubs along a freshly scraped elevation leaves a mark you cannot polish out.

So the answer is to plan for it rather than react to it. The working area gets fenced, materials go inside it at the end of each day, sand and cement are covered, the scaffold is closed off at the bottom so nothing wanders under it, and fresh render at low level is hoarded until it has gone off. It has to be set up on the first morning rather than improvised on the second. When you compare quotes here, ask what the protection is and whether it is included.

We cover Hangersley, Poulner, Ringwood, Burley and Ashley Heath, broadly BH24, 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.