Rendering in Lyndhurst
A village street seen as one thing, where the colour of a through-coloured render is the decision hardest to undo.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Colour is the decision people rush and then live with. A through-coloured render is not paint: the shade goes right through the coat, so changing your mind afterwards means coating the wall again. In a village where the whole street is looked at as one thing, it is also the part somebody may ask about.
The work behind that decision is ordinary. A hollow patch found by tapping. A crack from a window head that has widened over a few winters. Dash coming away on a weather elevation. Or a wall that greens over every year under the trees and looks tired long before it is worn out.
Nearly four in ten homes here predate 1919, so a good share of what we look at is solid walled and needs a soft breathable coat rather than a modern one. We tap the elevation, work out what the wall is built of, and put the system, the beads and the making good in writing on separate lines. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
The work
The systems, and how the colour gets into them
Silicone thin coat. Primer, a polymer basecoat with glass fibre mesh bedded into it, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat floated to a scraped texture. The pigment is in the topcoat rather than on it, so it does not peel and it fades slowly and evenly. It flexes a little and sheds water well. Beads and stop ends at every opening, a bellcast at the base.
Monocouche. One thick through-coloured coat scraped back the following day. The colour range is narrower than silicone and the finish is more granular, which suits some elevations and not others. It needs a sound background and a settled week, and it will show a patched wall.
Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Scratch and float coats with a smooth face, a dry dash thrown on green, or a Tyrolean flicked on. These are painted rather than through-coloured, which is why so many older village walls carry a masonry paint that needs redoing every decade. Matching an existing dash is aggregate size and colour, so a sample panel goes up first.
Lime render. A solid wall built before 1919 gets rid of rain by drying out through its own face, so it takes lime in two or three coats, hair gauged in the base, and limewash rather than a modern paint. Sealing one of those walls with a plastic rich coat puts the damp inside the house.
Tapping and hacking off. Blown render has parted from its background and sounds hollow. We tap the whole elevation and mark it, because the extent decides between cutting out panels and stripping the wall back to the background.
Cracking, delamination and staining. Fine crazing is shrinkage and cosmetic. An open crack is movement or a failed bead and wants opening up and reinforcing rather than filling. Algae and black staining on a shaded wall lift with a soft wash rather than pressure.
Render over external wall insulation. Board fixed to the wall as a render carrier, then mesh, basecoat and topcoat over it, with Approved Document L setting what a renovated wall is expected to reach. It thickens every reveal and changes the proportions of a frontage, so in the village centre it is a design question as much as a heating one.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access and scaffold, protection, preparation of the existing wall, the system and number of coats, beads and stop ends, and making good on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Renewing an existing finish in the same colour is maintenance and needs nothing. The village centre is a conservation area inside the National Park, so a change of material, or a colour that reads differently from the street, is a planning question here and the application goes to the National Park Authority rather than the district. The Park publishes what is designated and what that means, and the 31 listed entries in the village need consent. We check the address before quoting.
Cost
What decides the price of a rendering job
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 Victorian villa on the high street, a converted flat in a shared building and a detached house set back among trees each want a different platform before any material is ordered. 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.
If it has started to come away
Render that has blown or cracked open
Ring rather than use the form. A section that sounds hollow when you tap it, or a crack you can get a coin into, is letting water behind the render and the frost does the rest. We make the loose area safe, sheet it if the weather is against us, and price the elevation once we can see how far the blown area actually goes. Anything overhanging a pavement or a shop frontage goes first, because a loose panel of render above a footway is a hazard as well as a repair. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Choosing a colour you cannot easily change
With a through-coloured system the pigment is in the material. That is the advantage, because it cannot flake off the way paint does and you are not back up a ladder every eight years. It is also the catch: if you dislike it, the only real fix is another topcoat over the whole elevation. So the colour is worth more thought than the two minutes it usually gets in front of a card of swatches. A shade always reads lighter and brighter at the scale of a house than it does on a sample the size of a postcard, and it reads different again in flat winter light under tree cover than it did in the yard in June.
Two practical things help. First, insist on a sample panel on your own wall, at least the size of a door, and look at it dry, in the morning and in the evening, before anything is ordered. We will always put one up. Second, think about what is around the house rather than only about the house. In the village centre the frontages are seen together and a colour that jumps out of the row is the sort of change the conservation area is there to consider. Bright white is the one we most often steer people away from here, not because of planning but because deep shade and damp air green it over faster than anything else, and you will be washing it while your neighbours are not.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Lyndhurst, Emery Down, Bank, Minstead and the villages across the middle of the Forest, broadly SO43, with the New Forest National Park Authority for planning. 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.
Questions
Lyndhurst questions we get asked
Can we change the colour of our render in the village centre?
Often yes, but it is worth asking first. Inside a conservation area appearance is what is controlled, so renewing the same colour is maintenance while a noticeably different shade on a frontage that the street sees is a change somebody may want to look at. A short conversation before the scaffold goes up saves a long one afterwards.
Will you put a sample up before we commit?
Always, and on your wall rather than on a board in the van. A panel about the size of a door, in the actual system and texture, left to dry properly. Colour looks different wet, different at scale and different in winter light, and a swatch card has never yet told anybody the truth about a whole elevation.
Is it better to paint the render or have colour through it?
Depends on the wall. Through-coloured silicone or monocouche will not peel and needs far less attention, which suits a modern background. An old solid wall wants lime and limewash instead, because both stay breathable. Painting an existing sand and cement wall is the cheapest route and the one that comes round again soonest.
The wall that never sees sun stains first. Why is that?
Shade, damp air and tree cover. A wall that never gets sun stays wet for hours longer after rain, and algae only needs moisture and something to sit on. A soft wash lifts it. A smoother, water shedding topcoat slows its return, and cutting back what overhangs the wall does more than either.
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See the colour on your own wall first
Thomas taps the elevation, puts a full size sample panel up and itemises the system before anything is ordered. The visit and the written quote are free.