Rendering in Sopley, old core and new estate
One small village with two kinds of wall in it, and a system that suits one of them will cause real damage on the other.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Sopley is really two render jobs in one village. Round the church there is a conservation area and old solid walls that have to breathe. A few hundred yards away there is 1970s housing where a modern system is exactly the right answer. The wrong specification on either one causes trouble.
People do not usually know which side of that line they are on, and there is no reason they should. It only matters when somebody proposes putting a plastic rich coat on a wall that has been drying through its own face for two hundred years.
So we start with the address and the wall, not the product. We check whether the property is in the designated area, tap the elevation to see what is still bonded, and work out what the wall behind is built of. Then it goes into a written itemised quote with the access, the preparation, each coat and the beads listed separately. The visit and the quote are free.
The work
Lime on the old walls, modern systems on the new
Working out what the wall is. Before anything is quoted we tap the elevation and look at what the render is sitting on. A solid wall behaves nothing like a cavity wall built in the seventies, and that is the one mistake here that cannot be corrected afterwards.
Lime render on solid walls. A period wall carries moisture out through its face. Lime render lets it, so the wall dries and the coat stays put. It goes on in a scratch coat and a floating coat with a lime finish over it, worked and protected while it cures, and it is slower than anything modern for a reason.
Why a modern system is wrong on an old wall. Put a plastic rich topcoat on a solid wall and the moisture is trapped. It shows as damp on the inside face and, outside, a coat that lifts and blows off in the first hard frost. Not a question of quality, simply the wrong material for the background.
Silicone thin coat and monocouche on the newer houses. On the 1970s and 80s housing a modern system is exactly right. A mesh reinforced basecoat, a primer and a silicone topcoat scraped or floated, or a through-coloured monocouche laid in one build. Neither needs painting afterwards.
Traditional sand and cement, dash and Tyrolean. Still the right build for matching into an existing scratch and float elevation, for outbuildings and for garden walls. Dashed and Tyrolean finishes can be cut out and repaired, with the usual caveat that new aggregate reads lighter than weathered aggregate for a while.
Hacking off and preparing the background. Blown render comes off to a firm edge, by hand on an old wall where a breaker would take the face off soft brick or stonework. The background is made good, given a key and stabilised with a primer where it is friable.
Beads, bellcast and stop ends. Angle beads at the corners, stop beads at the reveals and a bellcast at the base so water drips clear. On a lime job the arrises are often formed by hand instead, because a hard metal bead in a soft coat is a crack waiting to happen.
Render over external wall insulation. On the newer cavity houses, insulation board or a render carrier fixed to the outside face and rendered over is worth pricing while the scaffold is up, for the thermal gain. On a solid wall EWI has to be a breathable build or it makes the drying problem worse.
Cracking, delamination, algae and staining. Cracks are cut out, meshed and made good before frost gets behind them. Green staining on a shaded elevation is a surface matter, and a wash with a treatment and a breathable coating deals with it 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.
Repairing a rendered elevation in the same material and the same finish is maintenance. Changing how it looks is not always, because Sopley has its own conservation area and the parish carries a good number of listed entries, several of them around the church. New Forest District Council is the planning authority here, not the National Park, though the Park keeps an interactive property map that shows which designations affect an address. Insulation behind a render is building control work rather than planning, and Approved Document L sets the Part L standard.
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 village street with the wall on the back edge of the verge, a terrace with access only through the house, and a detached house with a drive 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 six miles away, so a Sopley 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
Two kinds of wall, two different answers
The older core of the village and the housing built since the war need opposite things from a renderer, which is unusual enough in one small place to be worth spelling out. The pre-1919 houses have solid walls: no cavity, no damp proof course, and a fabric that stays dry by letting moisture pass out through its face. Three quarters of the housing went up between the war and the early eighties, and those are cavity walls that keep water out with a barrier.
A modern silicone or monocouche system is designed for the second kind. It is water shedding, it is relatively closed, and on a cavity wall that is exactly what you want. On a solid wall it seals the face, the moisture that used to leave through the render is trapped in the masonry, and it comes out on the inside of the house or pushes the coat off the outside.
So establish two things before accepting a quote. Whether the wall is solid or cavity, which a builder can tell you in a minute. And whether the address sits inside the conservation area, because there a change of texture is a planning question rather than a repair.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Sopley, Ripley, Winkton, Burton and the lanes towards Bransgore, broadly BH23, in the New Forest District Council area. 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
Sopley questions we get asked
Is my cottage on a solid wall or a cavity wall?
Age is the quickest guide, and the thickness at a window reveal is the next. Anything built before about 1920 in this village is likely solid; anything from the seventies estates is cavity. We check it at the visit before we recommend a system.
Why is lime render more expensive to apply?
Because it is slower at every stage. It goes on in more than one coat, each coat has to be worked and then protected while it cures, and it cannot be rushed with a machine. The labour is the cost, not the material.
Does the conservation area stop me rendering at all?
No. It controls appearance, so like for like repair is maintenance. Changing the texture or the colour of something visible from the road is where you need to ask, and the park authority is the place to ask rather than the district council.
Can you match the render on a cottage that has been patched before?
Usually. Old walls carry several generations of repair, so we take the mix and the finish from the soundest original area rather than from the last patch, which is often the thing that looks wrong.
Is render the answer to damp in an old cottage?
Rarely on its own, and the wrong render makes it worse. Damp in a solid wall is usually about how the wall dries rather than how much water it takes in, so the first job is to stop sealing it in with cement and impermeable paint.
Nearby, and next door
Rendering near Sopley
Rendering nearby
Our other trades in Sopley
Everything we do in Christchurch Rendering, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Find out which system your wall should actually have
Thomas checks the address and the wall, taps the elevation and prices the right system in writing. The visit and the quote are free.