Rendering in Poole
Ninety years of dash on the inter-war houses here, and the coat behind it has usually let go of the brick long before the surface starts to look tired.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most of the render we are asked to look at in Poole is 1930s pebbledash that has run out of road. It has parted from the brick in patches, the frost has opened the cracks, and the question is no longer whether to patch it but what should go on the wall instead.
People ring us about three things. A hollow area found by leaning on the wall. A crack from the corner of a window that keeps coming back after filler. And an elevation gone green on the shaded side that no longer washes clean.
None of those are decorating problems. Render is the coat that keeps driven rain out of the wall behind it, and once it has parted from the background it holds water against the brick rather than off it. We come out, tap the whole elevation, tell you how much of it is actually loose, and put it in a written itemised quote line by line. The site visit and the quote are free.
The work
Pebbledash, sand and cement, and what replaces them
Finding out what you have. Every quote starts with a rubber mallet. A sound render rings and a blown one gives a dull knock, and we chalk the hollow areas up so you can see them from the pavement. Forty per cent hollow and ninety per cent hollow are two different jobs.
Hacking off and preparing the background. Loose render comes off with a breaker and a bolster, back to a firm edge rather than to the edge of the stain. Underneath is usually inter-war brick with old chases and patched openings in it. That gets made good and given a key, and anything friable is brushed down and stabilised with a primer.
Traditional sand and cement. Still the right answer on plenty of walls here, especially where an elevation is patched into existing work. A scratch coat, a floating coat ruled off and left to cure, then a float finish or the dash. Slower than a thin coat system, but it takes a knock and it matches what is already on the building.
Pebbledash and Tyrolean. Both can still be repaired. Pebbledash is a wet coat with the aggregate thrown on; Tyrolean is flicked on with a hand machine and gives a finer texture. The honest warning is colour: new dash next to eighty years of weathering will not match, so where a patch would show from the road we would rather do the whole elevation.
Silicone thin coat and monocouche. A mesh reinforced basecoat over a prepared background, a primer, then a silicone or acrylic topcoat in a scraped or float texture, or a through-coloured monocouche scraped back. The colour is in the material rather than on it. We put a sample board on the wall first, because render colour reads differently on a north elevation to how it reads on a chart.
Render over external wall insulation. Where a solid wall is coming back to brick anyway, EWI is worth pricing at the same time. Insulation board or a render carrier is fixed to the wall and takes the same basecoat and topcoat, so the thermal gain costs you one scaffold rather than two.
Beads, bellcast and the edges. Where the render stops is where it gets judged and where it fails first. Stop beads at the reveals, angle beads on the corners, a bellcast bead so water drips clear instead of running back under, and a movement bead on a long elevation. Stainless or PVC rather than galvanised, because a rusting bead stains a new wall.
Cracking, delamination and staining. Hairline crazing in old sand and cement is usually cosmetic. A crack you can get a coin into is letting water behind. Algae and green staining on a shaded elevation are not a fault in the render, and a clean down and a breathable coating deal with them far more cheaply than a new system.
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.
Rendering an elevation the way it was rendered before is maintenance. Changing the look of a frontage is not: Town Centre Heritage is a conservation area, the town carries listed entries, and there appearance is controlled, so a smooth scraped finish in place of a dashed one is a planning question rather than a repair. For those boundaries the council keeps the list. Insulation behind the render is building control work rather than planning, and Approved Document L sets the Part L standard a renovated wall has to reach.
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 1930s semi in Parkstone with a side path, a terrace whose front elevation stands over a public footway, and a three storey house near the quay 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. We are under six miles away, so a Poole address is normally looked at within a day or two. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
The 1930s dash is reaching the end of its life
More of Poole went up in the 1930s than in any other decade, and a great deal of it was rendered and dashed. That work has now done ninety years on walls a few miles from open water. What we find on those elevations is nearly always the same: the dash itself looks respectable from the pavement, but the coat behind it has lost its grip on the brick, so whole panels ring hollow.
That matters for one reason. A blown render is not a tired finish, it is a reservoir. Water gets in at a crack, finds the void behind the render and stays trapped there. In a cold snap it freezes and pushes another few square feet off the wall.
So on a dashed inter-war house here, get it tapped before you get it painted. Painting a hollow render seals moisture in and buys you a season. If most of it is sound, isolated patches and a breathable coating are the sensible spend. If it is hollow across an elevation, take it off and put a modern system on with the beads, the bellcast and the mesh in the basecoat that the original never had.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Poole town, the quay, Parkstone, Oakdale, Hamworthy and Creekmoor, broadly BH15, under Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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
Poole questions we get asked
How do I tell whether my render needs replacing or just repairing?
Tap it. A sound render gives a sharp note and a blown one sounds hollow. Isolated hollow areas get cut out and patched. If a whole elevation gives that dull knock, patching is money spent twice.
Can you match a patch into existing pebbledash?
We can match the aggregate and the mix, but not eighty years of weathering, so a new patch reads lighter for a long while. Fine on a side elevation, less so on a frontage.
Is silicone render suitable for an older solid wall?
Not always. A pre-1919 solid wall has to let moisture out through its face. A plastic rich topcoat leaves it trapped and pushes the damp inside instead, so a period wall of that sort wants a lime based system. On an inter-war cavity wall a silicone thin coat is fine.
How many days does a full elevation take?
A patch repair is a day or two. A full elevation hacked off and rendered in a thin coat system usually runs to a working week once the scaffold is up, because each coat needs its drying time.
Do you render through the winter?
We work all year, but render will not go on into a frost or onto a wet wall. In a cold spell we sheet the scaffold and work with the weather, and we would sooner move a start date than put a coat on that will craze.
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Find out how much of your render is still stuck on
Thomas comes out, taps the whole elevation, marks the hollow areas up and prices the repair or the new system in writing. The visit and the quote are free.