Rendering in Ridge

The tap test comes first. On a Ridge wall, staining and failure are not the same thing. We sound the whole elevation first, because sound render answers dead and blown render drums, and a clean-looking wall can be hollow while a filthy one is sound.

Cleaning down and treating. Where the render on a Ridge house is sound, the work is a low pressure clean down and a treatment that takes the growth back to the root rather than shaving the top off it. No lance on a thin coat finish, because the coloured face is thin and a lance goes through it.

Hacking off. Where the render on a Ridge wall has parted from the background it is hacked off to block, brick or stone. The wall is cleaned down, anything friable stabilised, and the background left to dry properly before a new basecoat goes on it.

Silicone thin coat. A polymer basecoat with a full mesh, a primer, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. On a damp site like Ridge this is usually the sensible choice: the surface sheds water quickly, there is no paint film to fail, and it washes down without losing its colour.

Monocouche. A single through-coloured material in two passes, scraped back the next day. A good, even face on a sound background, and it takes a wash down in the same way.

Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. The traditional scratch and float, dashed aggregate and machine-flicked Tyrolean are all repairable and all texture matched from a sample panel. A heavy texture holds more dirt and stays wetter than a fine one, which here is worth knowing before you choose.

Lime on old solid walls. Where a building is period and pre-1919 the wall is solid and dries through its own face, so it wants a breathable lime render rather than a modern system that leaves moisture trapped behind it.

Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast stops the render clear of wet ground so it cannot wick up from the path. Stop beads finish it at a soffit or a corner, and angle beads keep the reveals straight.

Cracking, delamination and frost. Map crazing is a surface fault. A crack from an opening is movement. A wall that stays saturated freezes wetter, so frost damage is worse in Ridge than on a dry site and a small crack becomes a delaminated panel faster.

Render over external wall insulation. On an EWI job the render is the weather face of the system, over a render carrier board or the boards themselves, with a mesh basecoat and a thin coat over it, and beads, sills and pipes reset to the new thickness.

Rendering in Ridge has no rate per square metre. What is already on the wall, and which way it faces, decide the price. The south west face. The most exposed elevations in Ridge take wind and driven rain. That is where render cracks and blows first, and where the specification matters most: a proper bellcast bead above the damp course, sealed stop ends at the openings, and a finish that sheds water.

What comes off. Rendering over sound brick is one job. Where old sand and cement has blown, or pebbledash has come away from the brick behind it, all of that is hacked off first, and nobody sees that part from the lane.

The system. Silicone thin coat over insulation, monocouche through-coloured, lime, or traditional sand and cement all cost and behave differently. A solid wall that needs to breathe wants lime or a breathable system, or the damp moves inside.

Ground movement. On shrink-swell clay, cracks low on a wall can be the ground moving. Re-rendering over them without finding out why means paying twice.

Access. A single storey gable comes off a tower. A two storey elevation needs a scaffold that stands for weeks, and the work at height rules make it a priced line.

Ask which system is quoted, how many coats, whether old render is coming off, and whether the beads and scaffold are included.

Ridge sits low, right beside the water, with reed beds, wet heath and the river channel on the doorstep. That means humidity stays high for far longer after rain than it does on higher ground a couple of miles away, and mist sits here in the mornings well into the day.

A render only dries when the air around it is drier than it is, so a wall in Ridge spends much more of the year damp than the same wall on higher ground. Algae and green staining are the visible result. Frost damage is the invisible one.

The decision it should change is the finish, not the cleaning schedule. Choose a texture on the finer side rather than a deep scraped or heavily dashed one, because a coarse surface holds dirt and water in every hollow and dries more slowly. Choose a through-coloured system that washes at low pressure rather than a painted render that has to be repainted once it is patchy. Keep the render clear of wet ground on a bellcast, and keep planting off the wall so air gets to it. Do that and the wall stays presentable.

We render across Ridge, Stoborough, Wareham, Sandford and Arne, all inside Dorset Council's area, and Ridge is 11.9 miles from Wolverton Road in Boscombe, where we are based. The company name to check is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Ridge, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen, who owns it, taps the walls and prices the render before anyone else is involved. Our Checkatrade page shows a verified customer's score of 10 out of 10. No fee for the survey visit, and none for the itemised written quote either.

Most repairs in Ridge need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.