Rendering in Stourpaine, dash, lime and thin coat
Taking a dashed elevation back to a smooth modern finish changes how the house looks from the street, and inside a conservation area that is a planning question.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Rendering in Stourpaine often starts with pebbledash or Tyrolean that has begun to come away. Taking it off is straightforward; deciding what goes back is the real choice. A cavity house can take a silicone thin coat or monocouche, an older solid wall wants lime, and swapping dash for a smooth finish changes the look of a house in a conservation area. Damp plaster inside is plastering work, priced alongside.
The usual call is a dashed wall that rings hollow along the bottom, or a bay that has dropped off and left a grey scar. Sometimes it is a crack at a window corner. Once in a while it is somebody who cannot stand the pebbledash any more.
None of them is a job to decide from a photograph. The free site visit in Stourpaine is a survey with a hammer: we tap the whole face, work out how much has parted from the wall and what is behind it, then write it up with the hack off, the beads, each coat, the scaffold and the skip on separate lines.
The work
Getting the dash off, and choosing what replaces it
Getting the dash off comes first. On a Stourpaine house, pebbledash and Tyrolean are thrown finishes over a sand and cement backing, and they fail as a pair: the backing parts from the wall and the dash comes with it. We tap first, because dash hides cracking completely. Where a third of a face sounds hollow it is cheaper to hack off the whole elevation than chase patches for a fortnight.
Preparing the wall underneath. Once it is off a Stourpaine wall you can see the background. We clean down, prepare and stabilise anything dusty with a primer, cut a key where the face is too smooth, and cut out brick that has spalled at the arris. Old chases and filled openings get made good, because a basecoat reads every one of them through the finish otherwise.
What goes back on. On a Stourpaine cavity wall the usual choice is a silicone thin coat: primer, a mesh and scrim reinforced basecoat, then a through-coloured topcoat scraped or floated to a texture off a sample board. Monocouche is the one coat alternative and holds up better on a long plain elevation. Older acrylic and polymer rich systems craze. If you want the dash back, it can be thrown again over a fresh backing.
Lime where the wall is solid. A pre-1919 solid wall in Stourpaine has no cavity to keep water off the inner face, so it relies on being breathable. A plastic rich topcoat leaves moisture trapped, drives damp inwards and blows the render off in sheets. Those get lime, haired basecoat and soft topcoat, under limewash or a mineral paint that lets the wall work.
Beads, bellcast and stop ends. A bellcast bead throws water clear of the plinth instead of letting it run down behind the coat. Stop beads finish the render properly at reveals, verges and abutments, and stainless goes on wherever the wall gets wet, because galvanised beads rust through and stain the face. Where the render stops is where the job gets judged.
Insulated render, cracks and staining. On a cold wall, external wall insulation is worth pricing next to a plain re-render: EWI board fixed and dowelled on, a render carrier and mesh, then the same topcoat, with the thermal standard in Part L. Otherwise the routine faults are a crack wide enough to take a coin, a coat starting to delaminate around it, and green algae on the shaded gable, which is a clean rather than a render job unless the wall is wet.
How it runs
Re-rendering a wall: tap test, scaffold, coats
Thomas prices the render himself. He taps the whole elevation to map what is hollow, looks at what the wall underneath is made of, and checks the sills, beads and bellcast at the bottom. The quote breaks down into the scaffold, sheeting and protection, stripping or preparing the old surface, the render system and its coats, the beads and stop ends round the edges, and making good at sills and pipework. Hacking off and rendering are both on that quote.
Windows, doors and paths are covered before anything comes off. On a Stourpaine wall beside the lane, the scaffold is sheeted so dust and splashes stay on site. Hacked off render is bagged and taken away as we go. Soft brick or a crack found behind the old coat is photographed and priced, and we hold off until you decide.
On an unlisted Stourpaine house, rendering an external wall is normally permitted development where the new finish looks similar to the old. A conservation area changes that, so ask Dorset Council whether one covers your address before you swap dashed for smooth or add colour. On a listed building the render is protected fabric and needs listed building consent. We check the address before quoting any change of finish.
Cost
Hacking off, the system and the wall behind it
The area of the wall is the simple part. The old coat, and the wall under it, decide the price.
What comes off first. We knock across every Stourpaine elevation before quoting. Where it rings true, the old render can be cleaned, repaired and coated. Where it sounds drummy, it has parted from the wall and has to be stripped back to the flint, brick or block, pebbledash and all. Stripping and skips can be as much work as the new coats.
What the wall needs. An old solid wall of flint, brick or cob in Stourpaine has to be able to dry out, and lime lets it. A hard sand and cement coat, or a plastic-rich thin coat, holds the damp in and moves it indoors. Later blockwork is different: a silicone thin coat, or a monocouche coloured right through, is quicker there and works well.
Access. A low gable can be reached from a tower. A full house elevation needs scaffold, standing through every coat and every drying spell. The work at height rules make that its own line on the quote.
Ask anyone else quoting which system they are using and how many coats, whether the old render is being taken off or covered over, and whether beads, bellcast and stop ends are in the price.
If it has started to come away
Render cracked, hollow or coming off in sheets
Ring rather than use the form. Knock on the render with your knuckle: a dull, drummy sound means it has come away. That, or a crack you could slip a coin into, lets rain get behind the coat, and frost will then push more of it off.
Keep people clear if a loose piece hangs over a doorway. On the first visit to a Stourpaine house we bring down what is loose, cover the bare patch if rain is forecast, and price the elevation once the extent is clear. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If we cannot pick up, you hear from us again as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Taking the dash off changes the street, not just your house
A conservation area does not stop you rendering. What it controls is appearance, and pebbledash is appearance. A row where every house carries a grey thrown finish reads as one thing; the same row with one wall in smooth cream reads as another, and that is the change the designation exists to consider. So the sequence is: decide what you want, ask, then book the scaffold.
Stourpaine owners have three routes. Like for like is the easy one: throwing fresh dash over a new backing is maintenance and nobody needs to weigh in. A change of texture or colour inside the boundary is worth a call to Dorset Council first, and they will usually say quickly whether it is acceptable. On a listed building the render is part of what is listed, so consent comes first even when the change is an improvement, and the case for lime over cement is normally the argument that wins it. Ask how long that takes and the answer is weeks before a job is priced, or months after somebody has hacked a wall off.
Who you are dealing with
Who renders your wall, and where they come from
Our base is in Boscombe, nineteen miles from Stourpaine. We render there and in Durweston, Shillingstone, Pimperne and the villages up the Stour north of Blandford, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. You would be dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Stourpaine, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
The business is Thomas Hannen's, and he taps the wall and prices the job personally. A verified customer on Checkatrade scored our work 10 out of 10. The site visit is free of charge, and so is the itemised quote in writing.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Stourpaine?
Most repairs in Stourpaine 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.
| Question | In Stourpaine |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Stourpaine. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Stourpaine Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Stourpaine. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Dorset National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about rendering in Stourpaine
Can you take pebbledash off without damaging the brickwork?
Usually, yes. The dash and its backing come off together and the brick underneath is normally sound, though a few faces will have spalled where water sat behind. Those get cut out and made good. On soft old brick we would rather render over a repair than chase the last of the backing out of the joints.
Can we have a smooth finish instead of dash?
Technically yes on almost any wall. Whether you are allowed to depends on where the boundary runs, because a change of texture inside a conservation area is a change of appearance. Ask before you commit. Outside the boundary and unlisted, a similar finish is normally permitted development, but check a marked change of look with Dorset Council.
Is throwing new pebbledash still worth doing?
On the right house, yes. Thrown dash is tough, sheds water and hides patched repairs. Its weakness is that it hides the cracks too, so a dashed wall wants tapping every few years rather than looking at. On a period solid wall we would steer you to lime.
Will one rendered house stand out on the terrace?
It can, and that is worth saying before the money is spent. A colour matched to the neighbours in the same texture settles down within a season. A bright colour on one house in a row of grey will still be the first thing you see in five years.
Do we need scaffold for a single storey rear wall?
Not always. A low rear elevation can be done off a tower where the ground is firm and level. Anything at two storeys, anything over a conservatory, and anything being hacked off gets a scaffold, because it is a platform to work from for a week rather than a way of reaching the wall.
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Get the dashed elevation tapped and priced
Thomas comes out, taps the whole face, tells you how much has actually parted from the wall and prices the hack off, the system and the scaffold separately. The visit and the quote are free.