Rendering in Lytchett Matravers
Most of the render in this village is a panel over brick rather than a whole house, and the bottom edge of that panel is where it usually lets go.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Very little of Lytchett Matravers is rendered all over. The render here is nearly always a panel: an upper storey over brick, a gable end, a porch cheek. Where that panel stops is what decides the job.
Three things bring people to the phone. A rendered gable that sounds hollow when you knock it, usually along the bottom edge. A crack wide enough to take a coin, running down from the corner of a window. Or a shaded panel that has gone green and stayed green however often somebody has been at it with a pressure washer.
None of that is decided from the pavement. We tap the whole panel, corner to corner, because the hollow area is nearly always bigger than the stained area. Then you get a written itemised quote saying what comes off, what goes back and where it stops.
The work
Render panels, hollow areas and what goes back on
Tapping the elevation. Every quote starts with a knuckle over the whole surface. Sound render answers dead. Blown render drums, and the drumming carries well past the crack you can see. We chalk the hollow areas, and the chalk decides whether you are having a repair or an elevation.
Hacking off. Where sand and cement has parted from the background we hack off to the brick or block, prepare and clean down the wall, stabilise anything friable, and put a new basecoat on with mesh through it at the openings. Blown render cannot be stuck back and it cannot be sealed over.
Silicone thin coat. A polymer basecoat, a full mesh, a primer and a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. It moves better than sand and cement and sheds water off a block wall that expands and contracts. On the 1970s and early 1980s houses here that is usually the right answer.
Monocouche. One through-coloured material applied in two passes and scraped back the next day. There is no paint on it, so a scratch does not show a different colour underneath. It wants a good background and it is unforgiving of a wall patched a dozen times.
Traditional sand and cement. A scratch coat and a float coat, ruled off and painted. Still the right specification in plenty of places, and what most of the original panels here are.
Pebbledash and Tyrolean. Dashing throws aggregate into a wet coat, Tyrolean is flicked on from a machine. Both are repairable, and both are texture matched from a sample panel.
Render over external wall insulation. On an EWI job the render is not decoration, it is the weather face of the system. It goes on a render carrier board or straight onto the insulation, with a full mesh basecoat and a thin coat over it, and every bead, sill and soil pipe has to be reset to the new thickness. That is the thermal upgrade people look at while the scaffold is already up.
Solid walls that have to breathe. A period wall here, pre-1919 and with no cavity, dries through its own face. Put a plastic-rich modern system on one and the moisture is trapped and comes out inside instead. Those walls want a breathable lime render, softer than what it covers.
Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast at the bottom of a panel throws water clear of the wall below. Stop beads give a clean edge at a corner or a soffit, angle beads keep a reveal straight. Where a panel was stopped on nothing at all, that is usually where it failed.
Cracking, delamination and algae. Map crazing is a surface problem. Green growth on a shaded elevation is treated rather than blasted, because a pressure washer takes the face off a thin coat.
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.
There is no conservation area over Lytchett Matravers, so on an unlisted house taking a tired render off and putting a similar finish back is repair rather than development, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that line sits. Fifteen entries in the parish are listed, and on one of those a change of render needs listed building consent however ordinary it looks from the road. Renewing a whole elevation is where Approved Document L asks whether the wall should be insulated while the scaffold is up.
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 porch cheek at head height, a chalet bungalow gable and a two storey side elevation on a detached house 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.
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. Here it is nearly always the bottom edge of a gable panel that goes first, where the render was run straight down onto brickwork with no bead under it. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Whole streets here were detailed the same way
Most of this village went up in one long run from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and about four in ten houses date from that stretch. Builders working a site in those years used the same detail on every plot, so a whole road can share one rendered upper storey, one gable panel and one way of stopping the render at the bottom of it. When that detail is a weak one it does not fail on one house. It fails on the road.
The detail that catches people out is the base of the panel. On a lot of the stock here the render was taken down and finished on the brickwork below with no bellcast bead to throw water off. Rain wicks into that joint, freezes and lifts the bottom courses away from the block. From the ground you see a faint stain, but tapped it sounds hollow for a metre up. So start at the bottom edge rather than the crack you noticed.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Lytchett Matravers, Lytchett Minster, Upton, Organford and Post Green, broadly BH16, 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.
Questions
Lytchett Matravers questions we get asked
Can you render just the patch that has blown?
Only if it stops at something. Render has to finish on a bead, a corner or an opening, or the joint shows as a line and a shadow across the wall. If the hollow area runs into the middle of a panel we would rather take the panel back to its natural edge than leave you looking at a repair.
Our gable is cracked. Does all of it have to come off?
Not automatically. Fine crazing all over is a surface problem and can be bridged with mesh and recoated. A single crack running down from a window corner is movement, and covering it achieves nothing. The answer is in how far the hollow sound carries, not in how the crack looks.
Which system would you put on a 1970s house here?
Usually a silicone thin coat over a mesh reinforced basecoat. Those walls are lightweight block, they move with the weather, and a thin coat moves with them. Monocouche suits an even background, and traditional sand and cement is still right on some elevations.
Will the render be painted, or is the colour in it?
Depends what you pick. Silicone thin coat and monocouche are through-coloured, so a chip shows the same colour behind it. Sand and cement takes a breathable masonry paint, which you will want to look at again in due course.
Do you need a scaffold for one gable?
Above single storey, yes. A gable is built up in coats over several days, so the platform has to stand for the whole system and reach the verge. A porch cheek comes off a tower. Access is its own line on the quote either way.
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Get the gable tapped before you price the render
Thomas comes out, taps the whole elevation, tells you how far the hollow area really goes and itemises the work. The visit and the quote are free.