Rendering in Milborne St Andrew, wall first
What sits behind the render decides the system, so the first visit is spent working out what the wall is made of rather than measuring it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
On a village street the render is often the only thing between an old wall and the weather, and the wall behind it is not always what the front of the house suggests. Brick, flint and brick banding, cob, or a post-war cavity all want a different system on top.
Three calls come in more than any other. A wall gone hollow in patches after a wet winter. A face cracked in a map pattern corner to corner. And a house where somebody put sand and cement over something older, and it is coming away in slabs.
We come out, tap the elevation, and where the sound does not tell us enough we take a small section off in a quiet corner and look. That costs nothing, and it is the difference between a quote that holds and one that changes on day three. Then it goes in writing: the hack off, the beads, each coat, the scaffold and the waste on separate lines.
The work
Working out what the wall is, then rendering it
Tapping, and taking a look. Every survey starts with a scutch hammer along the elevation. Sound render rings, blown render sounds hollow, and the hollow areas have parted from the background. Where the sound is not enough, a small square comes off low down where nobody looks. Old cottages here hide all sorts under a smooth grey coat.
Hacking off and preparing. Loose render comes off to something firm. We clean down, prepare the wall, stabilise a dusty background with a primer and cut a key where the face is too smooth to hold a coat. Anything spalled off a brick arris is cut out and made good before a basecoat goes near it.
Lime on a solid wall. A period wall built pre-1919 has no cavity and no damp course to speak of. It copes by taking water in and letting it back out through the face. Put a plastic rich topcoat over that and the moisture is trapped, damp turns up inside, and in a few winters the render sheets off and brings the face of the wall with it. Those walls get a haired lime basecoat, a soft topcoat and a breathable limewash.
Silicone, monocouche and sand and cement. On a cavity wall in good order a silicone thin coat is the usual answer: primer, a mesh and scrim reinforced basecoat, then a through-coloured topcoat scraped or floated to a texture you pick off a sample board. Monocouche does it in one applied coat and is tougher on a large plain elevation. Older acrylic and polymer rich finishes craze. Traditional sand and cement still suits garages and plinths.
Render over external wall insulation. Where a wall is cold and already coming off, EWI is worth pricing alongside a plain re-render: insulation board fixed and dowelled on, a render carrier and mesh, then the same topcoat. Part L sets the thermal standard a renewed wall is expected to meet. It thickens the elevation, so sills, reveals, eaves and pipework all have to move out with it.
Cracks, dash and staining. Map cracking across a face is usually shrinkage in the coat rather than movement in the wall, and it stays cosmetic until it delaminates. A single crack that takes a coin is letting water in. Pebbledash and Tyrolean hide both, which is why a dashed elevation gets tapped rather than looked at. Green algae on a shaded face is a cleaning job unless the wall behind is wet.
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.
No conservation area covers the village, so on an ordinary unlisted house rendering an outside wall is normally permitted development, provided the finish is similar in appearance to the one it replaces. the Planning Portal page on external walls sets that out. What the parish does have is 25 listed entries, the parish church among them, and on a listed building the render is part of what is protected under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, so it needs listed building consent from Dorset Council before a hammer touches it.
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 thatched cottage wants the scaffold set back and boarded so nothing bears on the eaves, a pair of semis on the main road needs the footway managed, and a detached house with a lean-to on the back needs the platform built around it. 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. A cottage whose render has already opened up is worth ringing about before the winter rather than after it, because a fortnight of frost does more damage than a year of rain. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Here the control is building by building, not street by street
Most Dorset villages this size sit inside a conservation area boundary. This one does not, and that is worth knowing, because it means no area-wide control over what your elevation looks like. If the house is not listed, the colour, the texture and the system are your decision, and the only test is the permitted development one about the new finish being similar in appearance to the old.
The protection here is attached to individual buildings instead. There are 25 listed entries in the parish, and a listing is not only the front wall of the house named on it. It can pull in outbuildings, garden walls and a rendered barn in the same curtilage, and the existing render counts as protected fabric even where it is later cement that is doing harm. So check the address on the list before you plan the job, not after the scaffold is up. Where a house is listed we will put the case for a lime render in writing for the conservation officer, because taking cement off a solid wall and going back in lime is usually the argument that wins consent.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Milborne St Andrew, Dewlish, Puddletown, Winterborne Whitechurch and the villages along the valley, broadly DT11, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. 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
Milborne St Andrew questions we get asked
How do you find out what our wall is made of?
By tapping it, and if that is not conclusive, by taking a small square of render off somewhere out of sight. Fifteen minutes on the site visit tells us whether we are looking at brick, flint and brick, cob or a cavity, and the answer changes the system, the price and the programme.
The render on our cottage is cement. Should it come off?
If the wall behind is solid and the cement is blown or cracked, yes. It is holding water in a wall built to let it out. If it is still stuck fast everywhere and nothing is showing inside, there is a case for leaving it alone and watching it. We tell you which of the two you have.
How would we know if our house is listed?
Search the address on the national list, and if it is not clear, ask Dorset Council. Do it before you commit, because a listing can cover an outbuilding or a wall in the same curtilage, and consent is needed even when the change looks like an improvement.
Do you take the render right down to the ground?
No. It should stop clear of the ground on a bellcast bead, so water is thrown off the wall rather than wicked up behind the coat. Render taken down into the soil is a common cause of damp on an old house and one of the easiest things to put right.
What time of year is best for this?
Spring through to early autumn, and people ask how long that leaves them. Render needs to stay above freezing while it goes on and cures, and lime is fussier than cement. We will not coat a wall in a frost, so a winter enquiry usually means the survey, the quote and a start date in March.
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Find out what is behind the render first
Thomas comes out, taps the whole elevation, opens up a corner if he has to, and prices the hack off, the system and the scaffold line by line. The visit and the written quote are free.