Rendering in Langton Matravers

Tapping before anything else. We work along the elevation with a knuckle and a light hammer. Sound render answers dead, blown render drums, and the hollow area rarely matches the crack you can see from the lane. That survey is what the quote is built on.

Hacking off a cement render. On stone this is slow, careful work. The render has to come away without taking the face of the stone with it, so it comes off in sections by hand rather than with a breaker. Then the wall is cleaned down, raked out where the joints have gone, and left to dry before anything else happens.

Lime render on solid walls. Anything pre-1919 in this village is a period, solid wall and it wants a breathable lime render, softer than the stone it covers. It goes on in coats: a scratch coat keyed and left, a straightening coat, then a fine float finish. It cannot be rushed in cold weather, and it is the only thing that will not trap moisture in the wall.

Silicone thin coat and monocouche. On newer blockwork away from the old core, a polymer basecoat with a full mesh, a primer and a through-coloured silicone topcoat is the sensible specification. Monocouche gives the same through-colour in one material, in two passes scraped back the next day. Neither belongs on solid stone.

Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Plenty of the twentieth century walls here carry traditional sand and cement, a dash finish or a Tyrolean flick. All three are repairable, and matched off a sample panel first.

Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast at the foot of a render throws water clear instead of onto the plinth. Stop beads finish it cleanly at a soffit or corner, angle beads keep a reveal true, and here the beads are stainless because salt eats galvanised steel from the edge inwards.

Cracking, delamination and staining. Map crazing is a surface fault, a crack running from an opening is movement, and render that has parted from the background drums whatever it looks like. Green algae on the seaward side is treated and cleaned down gently rather than blasted.

Render over external wall insulation. Where EWI boards go on the outside of a wall, the render is the weather face of that system. It goes over a render carrier board or the insulation itself, with a mesh basecoat and a thin coat over it, and every bead, sill and pipe is reset to the new thickness. On solid stone in a conservation area it is rarely the right thermal answer, and we will say so.

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 stone cottage on the village street, a bungalow gable set back off it and a two storey rear elevation all need a different way in. 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.

The village sits a little over two miles back from the coast, on ground that runs down to it, and the weather comes off the sea from the south west. That does two things to a render. Salt keeps a surface damp for longer between showers, so the seaward elevation never gets the drying spell the sheltered side gets and algae takes hold there first. Salt also corrodes metal, which is why a galvanised bead on a seaward wall rusts and pushes the render off along the arris while the rest of the elevation is sound.

So on a house here the two elevations are not the same job and should not be priced as one. The seaward wall gets stainless beads, a specification chosen for driven rain rather than looks, and a finish that can be washed down rather than repainted. The sheltered side often needs nothing at all. A quote covering the whole house without anybody having walked round it has missed the one thing here that changes the work.

We cover Langton Matravers, Kingston, Worth Matravers, Harmans Cross and Swanage, broadly BH19, under Dorset 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.