Rendering in Lover, and the damp that comes with it
Many of the older houses in this corner are solid walled, and on those the render that was put on to keep water out is often the reason it is getting in.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Rendering in Lover often means undoing an old mistake. On a pre-1900 solid wall a hard cement render keeps water in, so cracked or hollow cement is taken off by hand and the wall goes back in lime. Newer cavity houses can be patched or re-rendered in a silicone thin coat or monocouche. If you have damp on an inside wall behind a rendered elevation, check the render first, then the plastering.
The first sign is usually indoors. A damp patch that comes back after decorating, salts on a chimney breast, or a skirting gone soft on one wall of the house and nowhere else.
Outside, the same Lover wall is rendered in something grey and hard, and when you knock it the sound is hollow. That is the whole story in two observations. We tap the elevation, look at the inside face too, and put the hack off, the lime, the beads, the scaffold and the waste in writing line by line.
The work
Reading the wall from both sides before quoting
The survey covers inside and out. A period wall in Lover is diagnosed from two sides. Outside we tap the elevation for hollow areas, look at where the render meets the ground and check the base for spalling and staining. Inside we look at the same wall at skirting level and at first floor, because the height of the damp says a lot about whether it is coming up, through or down.
Getting the cement off. Where the coat on a Lover wall has parted it comes off to a firm background. On soft old brick or a rubble wall that is careful work rather than a job for a breaker, and it is slower than it looks on the quote. We clean down, prepare, stabilise anything friable, cut a key where one is needed and then let the wall dry before anything goes back.
Lime going back on. A haired lime basecoat worked into the background, ruled out, then a soft topcoat, then limewash or a breathable mineral paint. Each layer is weaker and more permeable than the one under it, so water that gets in is never trapped and leaves through the face. BS 5250 is the code that deals with managing moisture in buildings, and it is the reasoning behind every one of those choices.
Where a modern system is right. Not every wall in Lover is pre-1919. On a post-war cavity wall a silicone thin coat is the sensible answer: primer, a mesh and scrim reinforced basecoat, a through-coloured topcoat scraped or floated to a texture off a sample board. Monocouche suits a big plain elevation, sand and cement still does for garages, and acrylic and polymer rich finishes craze. On a cold cavity wall, EWI, external wall insulation with a render carrier, is worth pricing and brings building control into it, with Part L setting the thermal target.
The base of the wall. Render taken down into the soil is a common cause of damp at the foot of an old solid wall. It should stop clear of the ground on a bellcast bead that throws the drip off, and the ground should fall away from the wall. Stop beads finish the render at reveals and verges, stainless rather than galvanised where the wall gets wet, and a raised path or a bed heaped against the wall gets mentioned on the quote whether you asked or not.
Cracking, dash and staining. Pebbledash and Tyrolean over cement hide cracking completely, which is why a dashed wall is tapped, not just looked at. A crack that takes a coin will delaminate the coat around it in a winter. Green algae on a shaded face is a cleaning job unless the wall behind is wet, and here it often is.
How it runs
Re-rendering on the weather side: how the job runs
Thomas taps the whole wall before he prices it, marks up what is hollow, and checks what the render is and what lies under it. On an older solid wall a breathable lime render is usually right. On a newer cavity wall a modern system may suit. The wall decides, not the colour chart.
What you receive for a Lover wall is a costed breakdown: the scaffold, covering up, stripping and preparing the old surface, the render itself coat by coat, the beads and stop ends that finish its edges, and the making good afterwards. One point of contact stays on it throughout. Glass, sills and paths are sheeted over, and no wall is left stripped bare with rain forecast. Lime goes on in thin coats and is misted to cure slowly, so the work follows the weather, and at 18.1 miles out the visits are planned so no coat is hurried. Waste render goes in our skip each day. If the brick under an old coat turns out cracked or soft, you see a photo and a figure before we continue.
Lover has no conservation area and eight listed entries. On an unlisted house, repairing existing render like for like is maintenance. Rendering a bare wall, or changing the finish, needs planning permission from the New Forest National Park Authority, because the Park removes that right. The National Park property map confirms what covers your address. On a listed building the render is protected fabric, so consent comes first.
Cost
What the wall already has on it sets the render price
What is on the wall now. Going over sound brick is straightforward. Knocking off sand and cement render that has come away, or pebbledash that has let go in sheets, is slow and heavy, and the extent cannot be judged from the lane. Every face is tapped before a price is written.
What goes back on. A lime render in three coats, a sand and cement one, a monocouche coloured right through and a thin silicone finish each cost something different. A solid wall needs to lose moisture through its face, and a hard or plastic-rich coat stops that and pushes the damp indoors, so the wall chooses the system.
Weather. South west faces here take the driven rain. The bellcast drip at the bottom, the stop ends and the returns at windows are where an exposed render gives way first, and doing them properly takes time.
The platform. A low wall on firm ground comes off a tower. A two storey gable on a Lover lane needs full scaffold, and a back wall reached through a narrow gate means carrying everything in. It stands for every coat, which is why, under the HSE rules on roofwork, it is its own line.
Season. Lime cannot be hurried or put on in frost, so the time of year shapes the programme.
Ask the other quotes: which system, and how many coats? Is the old render being removed? Are the beads, bellcast and scaffold in the price?
If it has started to come away
Render blown, cracked or letting damp in
Ring; do not use the form. A section that sounds hollow when tapped, a crack you can get a coin into, or a piece that has fallen means water is getting behind the render, and frost will push more off.
Keep people away from anything loose above a door or path. If damp is already showing inside on a rendered Lover wall, ring now rather than in spring, because every winter behind a sealed coat makes the wall worse. The first visit takes down what is loose, sheets it if the weather is against us, and finds how far the blown area goes before we price it. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If we cannot answer, we will get back to you as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Walls built before 1900, and why they change the job
If yours is one of them, that changes almost every render decision. A house built before 1900 has solid walls with no cavity and no reliable damp course. It was never meant to be waterproof. It was meant to get wet, hold a little water for a while and then dry out through its own surface, which is why the original finish was lime or nothing at all.
The trouble came later. Sand and cement became the standard answer everywhere in the second half of the last century, and plenty of old solid walls were given a coat of it. It works while it is stuck fast. Then it cracks, water gets behind it, and it cannot leave, because the coat it would have to pass through is denser than the wall. The damp shows up inside, on the wall carrying the newest render. So be suspicious of a hard render on an old house rather than reassured by it, and ask any contractor what your wall is made of before they tell you what they would put on it. If the answer starts with a product name, keep looking.
Who you are dealing with
The firm rendering your walls near Redlynch
Rendering at Lover and across Redlynch, Landford, Nomansland and the north western edge of the Forest is priced by Thomas Hannen himself, after he has tapped the wall. He owns Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, which is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and works from a base in Boscombe 18.1 miles away. Before you book a visit in Lover, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
A render job in Lover answers to the National Park Authority on planning and to Wiltshire Council on building regulations. A verified Checkatrade customer marked us 10 out of 10. We make no charge for the site visit or the itemised quote in writing.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Lover?
Most repairs in Lover 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.
| Question | In Lover |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Lover. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Lover, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Lover. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about rendering in Lover
Our damp problem is inside. Why are you looking at the render?
Because on a solid wall the outside finish decides whether the inside can dry. If the wall is sealed by a hard render, water that gets in at a crack or over the top has one way out, and it is inwards. Damp on one internal wall with a hard render outside it is a pattern, not a coincidence.
Is lime render more expensive than cement?
The materials cost more and the work takes longer, because it goes on in thinner coats and each one has to be left. Against that it lasts on an old wall where cement does not, and it does not have to be hacked off again in fifteen years. We put both on the quote where both are viable.
How long before the wall dries out?
Longer than people expect: a wall sealed for decades can take a full season to give up its moisture once the cement is off, and the render will not be rushed onto it. We would rather say so at the survey than three weeks into a job.
Can we insulate an old solid wall from outside?
It is possible with a breathable system, and it is not the same product as the boards used on a cavity wall. Getting it wrong on solid masonry moves the dew point into the wall and causes the problem you were trying to solve, so it needs designing rather than ordering.
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Silicone, cement or lime: which render? Cracked render: which cracks matter Listed building consent for repointing and re-renderingEverything we do in Ringwood Rendering, all areas Every area we cover
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Get the wall looked at from both sides
Thomas comes out, taps the elevation, checks the inside face and tells you honestly whether the render is the cause. The site visit and the written itemised quote are free.