Rendering at Thorney Hill
Pebbledash repairs, full re-dashing and modern systems around Thorney Hill and Bransgore, decided by what the backing coat is doing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A lot of the render around Thorney Hill is pebbledash, and a good deal of it is at the end of its life. The dash itself is not the problem. What fails is the backing coat underneath, and once that has parted from the wall no amount of new stone thrown at it will help.
Dash was thrown at these houses for a good reason. Aggregate cast into a wet coat gives a rough face that sheds driven rain and hides small movement, and on an exposed wall it outlasted a smooth finish by a wide margin. Fifty or eighty years on, some of it is still sound and some of it is hollow.
The choice people are trying to make is whether to repair the dash, re-dash the whole elevation, or take it off and go to something smooth and modern. All three are legitimate. We tap the wall and tell you which ones are actually available to you.
The work
Dash, and what comes after it
The survey on a dashed wall. Dash hides its condition, which is why it has to be tapped rather than looked at. A sound elevation rings hard through the aggregate. A hollow note means the backing coat has delaminated from the brick or block behind it. Bald patches where the stone has come away are a symptom of the same thing. We map it, photograph it and measure it.
Repairing dash. Where the backing is stuck, this is good honest work. Cut the failed area back to a firm edge, stabilise the surround, fill with a matching backing mix, then throw dash of the same aggregate and size into it. Matching the stone matters more than matching the colour, because at any distance your eye reads the texture. We put a sample up first.
Re-dashing a whole elevation. Where the dash is tired everywhere but the backing is sound, the wall can be washed, keyed, given a fresh floating coat and re-dashed corner to corner. It keeps the character of the building and it is the option a National Park setting tends to favour.
Taking dash off and going smooth. We hack off back to the background, clean down the wall, cut out loose and spalled material, and let it dry. Then beads, a primer or slurry key on dense block, a mesh reinforced polymer basecoat and a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a fine texture. It looks completely different, and on this land that change of appearance is a planning matter as well as a taste one.
Tyrolean, monocouche and traditional render. Tyrolean is a lighter thrown finish applied with a hand flicker rather than a scoop, and it suits a wall where full dash would look heavy. Monocouche is one thick through-coloured coat for new blockwork and extensions. Two coat sand and cement, scratched and floated, still belongs on plinths, garages, chimneys and boundary walls.
Render over external wall insulation. Where EWI board goes on outside, the render is the weather skin over a render carrier or a mesh basecoat on the board. In the park it changes the look of the building, so the thermal case and the planning case get made together.
The old cottages. Better than one house in five here predates 1919, so a solid wall with no cavity is common. Those dry through their own face and take lime render with a breathable finish. Dash on a lime backing can be sound for a very long time, and it is worth repairing rather than replacing.
Cracking, staining and moss. A crack out of a window corner is movement. Fine crazing is shrinkage. Moss and green algae sit in the hollows of a dashed surface and are cosmetic, though heavy growth holds water against the coat and is worth washing off.
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.
Thorney Hill sits inside the New Forest National Park, so the permitted development right to clad or render a house is withdrawn and changing the outside finish needs a planning application, while repairing what is there does not. The park authority publishes its heritage and conservation guidance, and there are three listed entries here, though no conservation area of its own. A full elevation also 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 cottage on a lane with no standing, a detached house behind a hedge and a run of outbuildings each want a different platform. 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. Dash that is dropping off a wall in plates is worth reporting quickly, since the loose area only grows once water is behind it. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Deciding what happens to a pebbledashed house
The honest starting point is that dash is not a cheap old finish somebody inflicted on the village. It was the right specification for an exposed wall before flexible modern systems existed, and where the backing coat has stayed bonded it can still have decades left. So the first question is never what you would like instead. It is how much of the backing is still stuck.
If most of it is, repairing or re-dashing is the sensible answer and by some distance the least disruptive. If the backing has gone over a large part of the wall, you are having a strip out whatever you choose, and at that point the decision genuinely is open: dash again, or a mesh reinforced basecoat with a modern topcoat. Inside the National Park that second option changes the appearance of the building and so needs a planning application, which is a conversation to have before you book anybody rather than after.
What we would steer you away from is dashing over a hollow backing to make a wall look presentable. It buys a season, it adds weight to a coat that is already struggling to hang on, and when it does let go it comes off in a much bigger piece. If a quote offers to re-dash without anyone having tapped the elevation, that is the thing to ask about.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Thorney Hill, Bransgore, Burley, Sopley and the BH23 addresses around them, under the New Forest National Park Authority. 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
Thorney Hill questions we get asked
Is our pebbledash finished, or can it be repaired?
It depends entirely on the backing coat under the aggregate, and you cannot tell by looking. We tap the elevation: a hard ring means the backing is still bonded and the dash can be cut back, patched and thrown to match. A hollow note over a large area means the wall wants stripping instead.
Can we take the dash off and have a smooth finish?
Physically yes, and it looks completely different afterwards. Inside the National Park a change of external finish is a planning application rather than permitted development, so that has to be agreed before the scaffold is booked. Repairing or re-dashing what is already there does not need permission.
Will new dash match the old?
Close, if the aggregate is right. We match the stone size and type first and the mortar colour second, because from the pavement the texture is what registers. A sample panel goes up on the wall so you can see it against the existing dash before the main work starts.
Why is there moss in our render?
Because a dashed surface has thousands of small hollows that hold moisture, and this is a sheltered, wooded spot. It is cosmetic in itself, though heavy growth keeps the coat damp, so it is worth washing off. It is not a sign that the render has failed, which is a separate test with a hammer.
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Get the dash tapped before you decide its future
Thomas sounds the elevation, tells you how much of the backing is still stuck, and prices the repair, the re-dash and the strip out in a free written itemised quote.