Rendering in Highcliffe and Walkford

Sounding the wall comes first. Every Highcliffe 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 Highcliffe 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 in Highcliffe 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 render job here is often 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.

Nobody should quote you a rate per metre without tapping the wall. What is already there decides the job. The old coating. Where the old coat is still bonded, it can be repaired or overcoated. Where the tap test finds hollow sand and cement, or pebbledash pulling away from the brick, it is hacked off rather than overlaid, and nobody can judge that from the street.

Exposure. The south west face of a house on the cliff is hit by rain driven off the sea, salt and all. The British Standard on wind-driven rain rates walls this close to the sea among the most exposed, and the system should be chosen for that.

The system. The choice is broadly silicone thin coat, a through-coloured monocouche, or a traditional sand and cement scratch and float, and each costs something different. Post-war houses in Highcliffe are mostly cavity built, which suits a modern system, and a thin coat can go over insulation. The few older solid walls need to breathe; a plastic-rich coat on one of those traps moisture and pushes the damp indoors.

The details. Bellcast at the base, stop ends, corner beads, the existing sills, and taking pipework and satellite dishes off and back are real hours.

Access. A scaffold that stands for weeks on a block costs more than a tower for a day on a bungalow, and working at height rules are why it is costed on its own.

Before comparing, pin down the system and the number of coats, whether old render is being hacked off or covered over, and whether scaffold is included.

Salt shortens the life of a rendered wall by holding it damp and by attacking metal. 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 in Highcliffe, ask whether the beads are stainless steel or galvanised, whether the topcoat is through-coloured or a painted render that will need a decorator back, and whether the basecoat is 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.

Rendered houses, bungalows and blocks in Highcliffe and Walkford, and the seaward walls at Friars Cliff, are all work we take on, with Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council as planning authority. The base is on Wolverton Road in Boscombe, 5.7 miles away.

Thomas Hannen owns the business, taps your wall and prices the render in person. One customer, verified by Checkatrade, gave us 10 out of 10. The visit is free of charge, and the written quote, broken down line by line, is too. Full name: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Highcliffe, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Highcliffe need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.