Rendering in Ringwood

Tapping comes first, then a test panel. A Ringwood elevation is sounded first, because sound render answers dead and blown render drums. On a pre-1900 wall we go one step further and take a small area off where it will not be seen, since what is underneath decides the whole job.

Hacking off old render. Coming off soft early Ringwood brickwork is slow hand work. A breaker takes the face off the brick with the render, which turns a rendering job into a repointing job you did not want. It comes off in sections, the wall is cleaned down, friable areas stabilised, and left to dry.

Lime render on solid walls. A period pre-1919 wall in Ringwood is solid, with no cavity, and it dries through its own face. It wants a breathable lime render: a scratch coat keyed and left, a straightening coat and a fine float. Put a hard modern system on that wall and the moisture is trapped and comes out inside.

Silicone thin coat. On modern blockwork, a polymer basecoat with a full mesh, a primer, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. Flexible, sheds water and needs no repainting.

Monocouche. One through-coloured material in two passes, scraped back the next day. Crisp on a sound even background and a poor choice over a wall that has been patched repeatedly.

Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. The traditional scratch and float, dashed aggregate and machine-flicked Tyrolean are all over the twentieth century stock in Ringwood. All three are repairable and the texture is matched from a sample panel on your own wall.

Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast at the foot throws water clear of the plinth, stop beads finish the render at a soffit or a boundary, angle beads keep the reveals straight, and on a long town elevation a movement bead saves a crack later.

Cracking, delamination and staining. Map crazing is a surface fault. A crack from a window head or a door is movement, and covering it just delays it. Frost is what turns either into a blown panel, and algae on a shaded elevation is treated and cleaned at low pressure rather than blasted off.

Render over external wall insulation. With EWI the render becomes the weather face of the system, applied over a render carrier board or the boards themselves with a mesh basecoat and a thin coat topcoat, and every bead, sill and pipe reset to the new thickness. It suits a block or cavity wall, not a solid one.

Render in Ringwood gets no figure per square metre from us. The wall you already have sets the price. Getting up there. A town centre frontage on the pavement, a bungalow gable on a post-war estate, and a rear elevation over a narrow garden all need different platforms, and the platform stays up until the last coat has cured. The work at height rules make it a priced line.

The old coat. Where the existing render on a Ringwood house is still bonded, it may only need repairing and a new finish. Where it has lost its grip, or old pebbledash has let go of the bricks, it all has to be hacked back to the masonry and bagged, and nobody can see how much from the road. Tapping every square metre is how Thomas finds it.

What goes back on. A silicone thin coat, a through-coloured monocouche and a traditional sand and cement scratch coat and float all cost different amounts. On the pre-1900 solid walls in the old centre, lime is usually the right answer, because a dense modern finish holds water in the brick and the damp ends up on your inside walls.

The edges. Beads at the corners, a bellcast drip at the base, stop ends at the windows, and taking down and refitting pipes and sills all take time.

Flats. On a block the elevation is shared, so the scaffold and the finish are agreed with the freeholder.

Ask any other firm which system and how many coats, whether the old render is coming off or being covered, and whether the scaffold is in their figure.

Close to one home in five in Ringwood was built before 1919, and on a wall of that age the render is almost never original. It was added later, and it was usually added for a reason.

Sometimes the reason was fashion. More often it was brickwork that had spalled, a patch where an opening was closed up, or a wall letting driven rain through. Whatever it was, it is still there under the render.

So on an older house in Ringwood we would rather open a small panel than write a confident number. It takes an hour, it goes somewhere that will not be seen, and it answers what decides the cost: is the brick sound or has the face gone, are the joints holding mortar, and does the render come off cleanly or want to bring the brick with it. Ask anyone quoting on an old elevation here whether they have looked behind the finish. If not, the price is a guess, and the difference lands on you once the scaffold is up.

Our Boscombe base is 8 miles from Ringwood, and we render across the town, Poulner and Hangersley under New Forest District Council, and Ashley Heath and St Leonards under Dorset Council. The limited company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Ringwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen, who owns the business, sounds out the render and prices the elevation himself. A verified Checkatrade customer gave the firm full marks, 10 out of 10. We do the visit, and the written quote with every item listed, free of charge.

Most repairs in Ringwood 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.