Rendering in Rockbourne
A village of cob, flint and thatch, where lime is the only render that belongs on an old wall.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In a village of cob, flint and thatch there is only one right system, and it is lime. A cement or a plastic rich render on an earth or rubble wall does not just fail, it damages the wall it is stuck to, and the damage is usually well advanced before anybody sees it from the outside.
People ring us for three reasons. A cement render put on decades ago that has cracked and is now holding water against the wall behind it. A soft old lime coat that has eroded back and wants making good. Or damp showing inside a cottage that was dry until somebody sealed the outside of it.
We come and look at what the wall is actually built of before we say a word about systems. Some of these walls are earth, some are flint rubble with a lime core, and a fair number have brick added at some point. Each takes a different preparation. Then you get it in writing, item by item. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
The work
Lime work on old walls, and modern render where it belongs
Lime render on cob and rubble. Two or three coats of lime, hair gauged into the base coats, worked well into the background and protected while it cures. It is soft, it is breathable, and it is sacrificial by design: the render weathers so the wall behind it does not. Finished with a float or a limewash rather than a modern paint, which would undo the point of it.
Taking cement off an old wall. The commonest and most careful job here. Hard render on cob has to come off by hand rather than with a breaker, because the wall behind it is softer than the coat. We tap the whole elevation first, work in sections, keep the wall covered between coats and never leave an earth wall open to the rain overnight.
Cracking, delamination and where water is getting in. On a cement coat the crack is the giveaway: water runs in behind it, cannot get out through the face, and the bond fails outwards from there. Tapping tells you how far it has already gone. On lime, fine crazing is normal and self healing rather than a fault.
Silicone thin coat and monocouche. The modern systems, and they have their place here too, on the later houses, extensions and blockwork garden walls. Primer, a polymer basecoat with mesh, then a through-coloured silicone or a single monocouche coat scraped back. Beads, stop ends and a bellcast at the base. What they do not belong on is an old solid wall.
Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Where a wall already carries one of these and the background suits it, a scratch and float coat with a dry dash or a Tyrolean finish is a straightforward repair. We match the aggregate and hang a sample panel first.
Algae, green growth and staining. Shaded elevations under trees hold moisture and go green. A soft wash lifts it. Pressure does not belong anywhere near a lime coat, and we will refuse rather than take the face off a wall to make it look clean for a season.
Render over external wall insulation. Board fixed to the wall as a render carrier, then mesh, basecoat and topcoat over it, with Approved Document L setting what a renovated wall should reach. It belongs on modern construction. On a breathable earth or rubble wall it is the wrong answer and we will tell you so rather than sell it to you.
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.
This matters more here than in most places. The village is a conservation area and there are 52 listed entries in and around it, so on many of these cottages a change of external finish needs consent before anything is touched, and the Planning Portal explains where external wall work needs permission. New Forest District Council is the authority. We look the address up and tell you what needs asking before we quote a system.
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 thatched cottage on the village street, a brick and flint outbuilding and a modern house on the edge of the village are three different platforms and three different systems. 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 an earth wall it is genuinely urgent, because cob that gets properly wet loses strength, and a failed patch of cement render will funnel rain straight into it. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Why cement render is the worst thing you can do to a cob wall
An old wall here is not waterproof and was never meant to be. Cob, chalk block and flint rubble all take up some rain in a wet spell and give it back in a dry one, and the lime coat over them is soft enough to let that happen and cheap enough to renew when it has done its work. The comparison between lime and cement on historic walls is well documented and the conclusion is consistent: the hard coat wins the argument with the soft wall, and the wall loses.
What happens in practice is slow and then sudden. A cement render is stiffer than the wall, so as the building moves it cracks rather than the wall flexing. Rain gets in through the crack. It cannot evaporate back out through a dense coat, so it runs down inside the render, softening cob or washing fines out of a rubble core, and it comes out at the bottom or on the inside face as damp. From the road the wall looks fine for years. When the render finally comes off, whole sections come with it and there is less wall behind than there was. If your cottage has cement on it, get it tapped now rather than waiting for a piece to fall, and budget for taking it off by hand rather than patching over it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Rockbourne, Whitsbury, Damerham and the villages towards Fordingbridge, broadly SP6, with New Forest District Council for planning and building control. 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
Rockbourne questions we get asked
Can a cob wall be rendered at all?
Yes, and it should be. An earth wall needs a coat over it to take the weather, it just has to be a soft breathable one. Lime in two or three coats, hair gauged in the base, is what these walls were built to carry and what they still want. The render is meant to wear out slowly so the wall does not.
How can we work out which render is already on the cottage?
Cement is hard, grey through the section and usually cracked in straight lines. Lime is softer, warmer in colour and tends to craze finely rather than split. Tapping tells you more than looking: a hollow note over a wide area on an old wall almost always means a hard coat that has let go.
Is lime render slower to do than a modern system?
Yes, and it should be. Each coat has to cure before the next, the work has to be kept damp and covered rather than dried out fast, and frost stops it altogether. That is a scheduling fact rather than a problem, and we build the waiting days into the programme instead of pretending they are not there.
The ground here is wet. Does that change the render?
It changes the bottom of the wall. Where ground water sits high, or a path or border traps water against the base, the coat has to stop clear of the ground and the ground itself often needs looking at as well. Render taken down into wet soil will fail from the bottom whatever it is made of.
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Have the old wall looked at before it is coated
Thomas comes out, works out what the wall is built of, taps for hollow areas and itemises the lime work. The visit and the written quote are free.