Rendering in Highcliffe and Walkford

Sounding the wall. Every quote starts with a hammer, not a tape measure. A coat that answers hollow has already parted from the background and cannot be saved by anything applied over it. We mark, photograph and measure the blown areas, because that area sets the hours.

Hacking off and preparing. Hack off to the background, clean down, cut out loose mortar and any spalled brick, then let the wall dry. On a seaward elevation there is often salt in the old backing too, which is why we would rather take a doubtful coat off than build on it. A primer or a slurry key on dense block, then the beads.

Beads, and why they are stainless here. Angle beads on the corners, stop beads at reveals and against frames, a bellcast at the base. Near the coast these go on in stainless steel. A galvanised bead this close to salt air corrodes behind the coat and pushes a brown line through the finish within a few years, and there is no way to put that right except to cut the bead out and patch the wall.

Silicone thin coat. Mesh reinforced polymer basecoat, flexible through-coloured topcoat, scraped to a fine texture. The colour goes through the coat rather than sitting on it, which matters a great deal here, because painted render on the seaward side needs redoing far sooner than anybody expects. It stays breathable and sheds driven rain.

Monocouche, sand and cement, and dash. Monocouche is a single thick through-coloured coat for new blockwork and extensions. Traditional two coat sand and cement, scratched and floated, still suits plinths, garages and boundary walls, and takes paint, dry dash or a Tyrolean finish. Pebbledash on the older houses can be repaired and re-dashed where the backing has stayed stuck.

Cracking, staining and algae. Fine crazing is shrinkage. A crack out of a window corner is movement. Salt bloom is a white powdery deposit that brushes off and comes back. Green and black growth is algae, and on a coastal wall that is damp more of the time it arrives sooner. Only one of those four is a reason to re-render.

Render over external wall insulation. Where EWI board goes on outside, the render becomes the weather skin over a render carrier or a mesh basecoat on the board, and near the coast the thermal gain lives or dies on the base and sill detailing.

Blocks of flats. Close to four homes in ten in Highcliffe are flats, so a good share of what we look at is a whole elevation rather than one house. That work is instructed by the freeholder or the managing agent, and it is worth getting the render surveyed before a section of it is condemned.

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 seafront block, a chalet bungalow set back off the road and a semi with a garage tight to the boundary 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.

Salt does two things to a rendered wall and both of them shorten its life. It is hygroscopic, so it draws moisture out of the air and holds the surface damp long after the rain has stopped, which is why coastal elevations green over faster and why a painted finish chalks so much sooner than the same paint half a mile inland. And it is aggressive to metal, so anything ferrous inside the render corrodes from the edges in.

That second point is the one that costs people money. A galvanised angle bead has a thin zinc coating and no more. Set into a render two hundred metres from open water, it will start to go, and when it does the corrosion expands, cracks the coat along the arris and bleeds a rust coloured stain down a wall you have just paid to finish. The fix is not a repaint. It is cutting the bead out and making the corner good again.

So when you compare quotes here, ask three things. Are the beads stainless steel or galvanised. Is the topcoat through-coloured or is it a painted render that will need a decorator back. And is the basecoat mesh reinforced, which matters more on a wall that stays damp and moves with temperature. A quote that does not mention the beads at all is a quote from somebody who has not thought about where your house is.

We cover Highcliffe, Walkford, Friars Cliff and the BH23 addresses around them, out through Christchurch and Mudeford, 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.