Rendering in Verwood
More than four homes in ten here are bungalows, which makes the access cheap and puts the whole wall within reach of a lawnmower.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Verwood is bungalow country. More than four homes in ten are single storey, and that changes the arithmetic of a render job twice over: the platform to reach the wall costs far less than it would on a house, and the whole of that wall sits at ground level where things happen to it.
Most of the town went up in the 1980s and just after, on lightweight blockwork with a thin traditional render over it. That render is now old enough to be crazing, chalking and letting go along the bottom, and the calls we get are almost always about the lower part of the wall rather than the top.
We tap the whole thing before pricing, because a hollow area rarely stops where the stain does. Then you get a written itemised quote with the system, the coats, the beads and the access on separate lines, free.
The work
Single storey elevations and the bottom of the wall
Sounding it. A knuckle over the whole elevation, corner to corner and right down to the ground. Sound render answers dead, blown render drums, and on these bungalows the drumming usually runs along the base rather than around the crack you noticed.
Hacking off. Where the render has parted from the block it comes off, the wall is cleaned down, anything friable is stabilised and the background is left to dry before a new basecoat goes near it. Coating over a hollow area buys you two years and then the same conversation.
Silicone thin coat. A polymer basecoat with a full mesh, a primer, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped to a texture. On the block walls of this period it is the sensible answer: it flexes, it sheds water and it takes a knock better than a hard traditional render does.
Monocouche. A single through-coloured material in two passes, scraped back the next day. Even and crisp on a good background, and it wants a wall that has not been patched a dozen times.
Traditional sand and cement. Scratch coat and float coat, ruled off and finished, then a breathable masonry paint. This is what most of the original render in the town is, and where it is still stuck it can often be prepared and recoated instead of replaced.
Pebbledash and Tyrolean. Dashed aggregate thrown into a wet coat and machine-flicked Tyrolean both appear on the older streets. Both repair well and the texture is matched from a sample panel put up on your own wall.
Beads, bellcast and stop ends. On a bungalow the bellcast is the bead that earns its keep, because it stops the render clear of the ground and throws water off instead of letting it wick up from a path or a border. Stop beads finish at the soffit, angle beads keep the reveals straight.
Cracking, delamination and algae. Map crazing is a surface fault. A crack from a window head is movement. Frost turns either into a blown panel, and it does it fastest at the base where the wall is wettest. Green growth is treated and cleaned at low pressure rather than blasted.
Render over external wall insulation. With EWI the render is the weather face of the system, over a render carrier board or the boards themselves, with a mesh basecoat and a thin coat topcoat, and every bead, sill and pipe reset to the new thickness. On a single storey house the access is cheap, which makes it worth pricing while the wall is open.
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.
Verwood has no conservation area and only a few listed entries, so on an ordinary house putting a similar render back on a wall that is already rendered is repair rather than development, which is the line Planning Portal guidance on external walls draws. If a building is listed, a change of render needs listed building consent however plain it looks from the road. Where a whole elevation is being insulated rather than recoated, Approved Document L applies and building control is involved. Dorset Council is the authority for both.
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 bungalow elevation off a tower, a chalet gable with a dormer in it and a two storey house on the newer developments 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. Look along the bottom of the wall after a wet spell, because on a bungalow that is where the render lets go first. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
On a bungalow the whole wall is within reach
Two things follow from a town where more than four in ten homes are single storey, and they pull in opposite directions. The good news is access. A bungalow elevation can usually be worked from a tower or a light platform rather than a full scaffold, so the access line on the quote is a fraction of what the same wall area would cost on a two storey house. That is why it is often worth doing the whole envelope at once here rather than one elevation at a time, since the set-up is the expensive part and you only pay for it once.
The bad news is that all of that wall is at waist height and below. The bottom of a bungalow wall takes rain splashing back off a path, wheelie bins, hose reels, ladders, strimmer line and the corner of a mower. Add a flower bed banked against the render and the base is permanently damp with no way of drying. So the details that matter here are the low ones: a bellcast that stops the render clear of the ground, a gap between the finish and any soil or paving, and a tougher basecoat where things get knocked. Get those right and a bungalow render outlasts a house one.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Verwood, Three Legged Cross, West Moors, Alderholt and St Leonards, broadly BH31, 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
Verwood questions we get asked
Is rendering a bungalow cheaper than a house?
The access usually is, and that is a real part of the price. A single storey wall can often be reached from a tower rather than a full scaffold. The wall area is bigger than people expect around a sprawling bungalow, so it is not half the cost, but the set-up is far less.
Our render is failing along the bottom. Why only there?
Because that is the wettest part of the wall. Rain splashes back off the path, borders hold moisture against it, and if the render was run down onto the ground with no bellcast bead the water wicks straight up behind it. Then a frost lifts it off the block.
Should we take the flower bed away from the wall?
It helps a great deal. Soil banked against a render keeps the base permanently damp and stops it drying at all. Leaving a gap, or dropping the bed a little, is the cheapest thing you can do for a rendered wall and it makes any repair last longer.
Can the old render be kept if it is only crazed?
Often, yes. If it is still stuck it can be cleaned down, stabilised, primed and given a mesh basecoat and a thin coat over the top. That is a much smaller job than a replacement. The tap test decides it and we do that before writing anything down.
Do you do the whole bungalow or one wall at a time?
Either, but the whole thing usually works out better value here. The access and the set-up are the same whether you do one elevation or four, so splitting the job means paying for that twice. We will price both ways so you can see the difference.
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Get the base of the wall looked at first
Thomas comes out, taps the whole elevation down to the ground and itemises the work in writing, access included. The visit and the quote are free.