Rendering in Ridge
Damp air off the river and the reed beds keeps a wall wet between showers here, so the finish is chosen for how it cleans down as much as for how it looks.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
The commonest render complaint at Ridge is not a crack. It is green. The hamlet sits low beside the river channel with reed beds and heath around it, the air stays damp long after the rain stops, and a wall that never dries fully grows algae faster than one a mile inland.
That matters because the usual response makes it worse. Somebody takes a pressure washer to a thin coat render, the growth goes and so does a little of the coloured face. Do it twice more and the wall is porous, patchy and holding more water than before.
So the visit starts with what the finish is and how wet the wall stays, not with a colour chart. We tap the elevation, look at the shaded sides and the base, and write an itemised quote. Visit and quote both free.
What we take on
Green walls, hollow areas and finishes that clean down
The tap test. 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 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 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 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 rather than letting it 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 here 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.
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 at Ridge itself and the listed entries nearby are concentrated towards Wareham rather than in the hamlet, so on an ordinary house putting a similar render back is repair rather than development, along the line Planning Portal guidance on external walls draws. If your building is one of the listed ones, a change of render needs listed building consent however plain it looks from the lane. Where a full elevation is being insulated rather than recoated, Approved Document L applies and building control is involved. Dorset Council is the authority.
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 cottage on the lane, a bungalow set back behind a hedge and a two storey elevation over soft ground 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. On a wall that stays damp, a small crack lets in more water than it looks like it should, so it is worth dealing with before a frost. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
A wall that never quite dries out
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 here 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.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Ridge, Stoborough, Wareham, Sandford and Arne, broadly BH20, 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
Ridge questions we get asked
Why does our wall go green again so quickly?
Because it is damp for more of the year than a wall on higher ground. Algae needs moisture and a surface to sit on, and here it gets both. The honest answer is that treatment buys you years rather than for ever, and a finer, through-coloured finish that dries quickly buys more of them than a heavy textured one.
Can you jet wash render?
Not a thin coat one, no. The coloured face is thin and a lance takes it off along with the growth, which leaves the wall porous and worse than it started. We clean at low pressure and treat the surface. On sound sand and cement there is a bit more room, but not much.
Does the render need to come off, or just cleaning?
That is exactly what the tap test answers. Staining and failure are not the same thing. If the wall sounds dead all over then it is a clean and a treatment. If it drums, cleaning it just gives you a tidy hollow area, and we will say so.
Which texture would you choose here?
Something on the finer side. A deep scraped or coarse dashed finish looks lovely and holds dirt and water in every hollow, which on this site means it stays damp longer and greens faster. It is a small choice at the quote stage and it makes a real difference afterwards.
Could we add insulation at the same time?
It can be, on a block or cavity wall. The scaffold and the preparation are the expensive part and they are already paid for, so adding boards and rendering over them costs less than doing it as its own job later. On an old solid wall it is usually the wrong answer and we will tell you why.
Nearby, and next door
Rendering near Ridge
Rendering nearby
Our other trades in Ridge
Everything we do in Wareham Rendering, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get the wall sounded before you book a clean
Thomas comes out, taps the elevation, tells you whether it is staining or failure and itemises the work in writing. The visit and the quote are free.