Rendering in Stone and Pamphill
Lime render on the older solid walls and thin coat systems on the newer cavity ones, decided by tapping the wall rather than by the street it stands on.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
You cannot specify a render for a street around here. You can only specify one for a wall. On the same lane there are solid brick cottages that have to breathe and 1980s cavity houses that do not, and the coat that is right on one is the coat that ruins the other.
That is why we tap before we talk about colour. Knocking round an elevation with a light hammer tells you three things in ten minutes: whether the render is still stuck, whether the wall behind it is solid or cavity, and whether the backing is lime or cement. Everything else follows from those answers.
The calls themselves are ordinary. Dash coming off in plates. A bulge under a sill. A crack that has opened up over a winter. A wall that greens over every year no matter how often it is washed. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free, so there is no cost in finding out which one you have.
The work
Two kinds of wall, two kinds of render
Solid walled cottages and older brickwork. Around one house in five here predates 1919, which means a solid wall with no cavity, built to get wet and dry out again through its own face. Those take a lime render: a haired first coat worked well into the background, a floated second, and a mineral finish or limewash over it. It is slower, it wants protecting from sun and frost while it cures, and it is the only thing that will not push the damp inwards.
Post-war and modern cavity walls. On blockwork with a cavity behind it a modern system is the sensible answer. Silicone thin coat is what we put forward most: an alkali resistant mesh worked into a polymer basecoat, then a flexible through-coloured topcoat scraped to a fine texture. Monocouche does the same job in one thick coat and suits new blockwork and extensions.
Telling them apart. A cavity wall usually shows a header pattern that is too regular, wall ties on a survey, and a coat that sounds different under the hammer. A solid wall shows headers every few courses and a lime backing that crumbles rather than shatters. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive mistake in rendering, so we would rather open a small area up than guess.
Hacking off and preparation. Where a coat has failed we hack off to the background, clean down, cut out loose or spalled material, and let it dry. A primer or slurry key on dense block. Then the beads: angle beads on the corners, stop beads at reveals, and a bellcast at the base so water is thrown clear of the wall rather than running back under the coat.
Sand and cement, dash and Tyrolean. Traditional two coat work, scratched and floated, still earns its place on plinths, garages, chimneys and boundary walls, and it takes paint, dry dash or a Tyrolean finish. Where existing pebbledash has a sound backing we stabilise and patch it and re-dash to match rather than strip a whole elevation.
Cracking, staining and algae. Fine crazing across a panel is shrinkage in the coat. A single crack running out of a corner is movement in the building. Green and black streaking is algae and wants washing, not rendering. We say which is which before anybody quotes.
Render over external wall insulation. On the newer houses EWI board with a render carrier or a mesh basecoat is worth considering. On a solid walled cottage it is a specialist decision, because the thermal gain has to be weighed against what it does to the way the wall dries.
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.
Renewing render that is already on a wall is maintenance. Rendering a wall that never was, or changing the finish, is a planning question and the Planning Portal sets out where the line falls. The listed entries near here are concentrated on the estate at Pamphill rather than in the ordinary housing, but if yours is one of them consent comes before any work. A full elevation renewal brings Part L and building control in.
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 terrace with the wall on the pavement, a detached house on an open plot and a cottage down a track are three different platforms and three different delivery problems. 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 lime rendered wall a loose area matters sooner, because once water is behind it the frost gets into the soft backing quickly. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
The wrong system on an old wall is worse than no system
A solid brick wall works by getting wet and drying out again. Rain soaks into the outer face, the wall holds it for a while, and then it evaporates back out through the same surface once the weather turns. Nothing about that is a fault. It is how the building was designed, and a lime render is porous on purpose so it can take part in it.
Put a cement rich or plastic rich modern render on that wall and you break the cycle. Water still gets in, through a crack, round a sill, up from the ground, but now it cannot get back out through the face, so it moves to the next available route. That is the inside of the wall. The result is a damp shadow along a skirting, salts coming through the paint, and in a bad winter the frost lifting the new render off in sheets because it has been holding water behind it all year.
The rule is easy to say and worth insisting on. Modern systems on modern cavity walls, lime on solid walls. If somebody quotes you a silicone or a monocouche finish for a pre-1919 cottage without once asking what the wall is made of, that is the answer to whether they have looked at it. Ask them what the wall is, how they know, and what the render does when it gets wet.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Stone, Pamphill, Cowgrove, Wimborne and the BH21 addresses around them, 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
Stone questions we get asked
How can we tell what our wall is built of?
By the brick pattern, by the sound under a hammer, and where there is any doubt by opening a small area up. A solid wall shows headers running through every few courses and a soft lime backing. A cavity wall is usually stretchers all the way with a harder, more regular coat over it.
Why can we not just use the same render the neighbours had?
Because the wall behind it may not be the same wall. On these lanes a pre-1919 cottage and an eighties house can be thirty feet apart. The neighbour's silicone system may be exactly right for their blockwork and exactly wrong for your solid brick, and you would not find out for a couple of winters.
Is lime render much more expensive?
It is more labour and more waiting rather than dearer materials. There are more coats, each one wants time before the next, and it has to be protected from sun, wind and frost while it cures. What it is not is optional on a wall that has to dry through its own face.
Will a patch blend in with the render around it?
Usually. We match the texture and the aggregate first and the colour second, because texture is what the eye reads at a distance. A sample panel goes on the wall before the main work so you can see it in daylight next to the old finish rather than judging it off a card.
Nearby, and next door
Rendering near Stone
Rendering nearby
Our other trades in Stone
Everything we do in Corfe Mullen Rendering, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get the wall identified before the render is chosen
Thomas taps the elevation, works out what the wall is made of and what belongs on it, and puts the whole thing in a free written itemised quote.