Rendering in Parkstone

Tapping the wall and finding out what it is. Every quote starts with a mallet and a look at the wall where the render stops. A sound coat rings, a blown one gives a dull knock, and we chalk the hollow areas so you can see them. Knowing whether the wall is solid brick or a cavity matters more than the colour you want, because it decides which render the wall can live with.

Lime render on Victorian and Edwardian solid walls. A pre-1919 Parkstone wall has no cavity and often only a slate damp course, so it stays healthy by letting moisture out through its face. Hard sand and cement, or a plastic masonry paint, traps that moisture behind the coat. The render parts from the brick, the inside walls go damp and the owner blames the gutters. The fix is to hack the cement off and re-render in a breathable lime, built up in coats with time to cure between them, finished with a limewash or a mineral paint. It is slower than a modern system and it has to be kept out of frost, but on a period wall it is the one that lasts.

Patching an existing render to match. Where most of the coat on a Parkstone house is sound we cut the blown patches back to a firm edge, key the background and fill in the same build as the original. Matching the texture is straightforward. Matching the colour of a wall that has weathered for decades is not, so on a frontage we talk about repainting or recoating the whole elevation instead of leaving a new square showing.

Pebbledash and Tyrolean on the inter-war and post-war houses. Further up the hill, where the semis and short terraces went up between the wars and after them, a lot of walls are dashed. Dash lasts well until the coat behind it lets go of the brick, then whole panels ring hollow while the stones still look fine from the road. Isolated patches get cut out and re-dashed. A hollow elevation comes back to the brick.

Silicone thin coat and monocouche. On a Parkstone cavity wall these are usually the sensible replacement: a mesh reinforced basecoat, a primer, then a silicone topcoat floated or scraped to the texture you choose, or a through-coloured monocouche put on in one build. The colour is in the material, so it does not need painting. We put a sample on the wall first, because a colour chosen from a card in the kitchen reads differently on a north elevation.

Blocks of flats and converted villas. Parkstone has a lot of flats, in purpose-built blocks and in big Victorian houses split into three or four. Render on those is usually the freeholder's repair and the leaseholders pay a share, so we price it elevation by elevation, in a form a managing agent can send out with the section 20 consultation notice.

Render over external wall insulation. Where a later solid wall or a cold gable is coming back to the brick anyway, insulation board fixed under the new render is worth pricing at the same time, because the scaffold is already paid for. It is not something we would put on a Victorian lime wall, where the thermal gain is not worth the moisture risk.

Beads, bellcast and the base of the wall. Stop beads at the reveals, angle beads on the corners, and a bellcast above the damp course so water drips clear instead of tracking back under the coat. Stainless or PVC, never galvanised, because a rusting bead splits the render from inside. The render stops short of the ground so it cannot wick water up behind itself.

Cracks, staining and green growth. Fine crazing on old sand and cement is usually cosmetic. A crack that runs from the corner of a window, or one you can get a coin into, lets water behind the coat and wants cutting out and meshing. Green or black staining on a shaded elevation is algae, not a failed render, and a clean down and a breathable coating cost a fraction of a new system.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. 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.

On a Parkstone job 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.

Re-rendering a wall that was already rendered, in the same finish, is maintenance. Rendering over bare brick, or changing the finish, is different inside Ashley Cross conservation area, and the council keeps the list. A flat has no permitted development rights at all, so a change of finish on a block needs planning either way. Insulation under the render is building control work to the Part L standard in Approved Document L.

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 of a Parkstone wall safe, sheet it if the weather is against us, and price the elevation once we can see how far the blown area actually goes. Where a bay or a porch sits close to the pavement on the older streets, keep the path under a loose patch clear until it has been taken down. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

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Ashley Cross conservation area covers the Victorian and Edwardian centre of Lower Parkstone, around the green, Commercial Road, Station Road and Church Road, with St Peter's Church and Parkstone station inside it. Much of that street scene is facing brick, and that is what the planning rules protect.

On a house in a conservation area, cladding any part of the outside in render, pebbledash, stone, timber or tiles is not permitted development. So rendering over a brick front, or a side wall that can be seen, needs planning permission before anyone starts, even though the same job two streets outside the boundary would not.

What that means in practice. If your wall is already rendered, re-rendering it in the same finish is repair and you can get on with it. If you are thinking of rendering over brick because it has gone soft or damp, ask first whether the brick itself is the problem: often it is failed pointing or a cement patch trapping water, and repointing in lime solves it without a planning application. Where render really is the answer, we photograph the elevation, note the materials and colour, and give you what the application needs. The Planning Portal guidance on external walls is a clear place to read the rule for yourself.

Nearby places we also cover for rendering, with straight-line distances from Parkstone, and the other trades we offer in Parkstone itself.

Everything we do in Parkstone Rendering, all areas Every area we cover