Rendering in West Moors

Sounding the elevation. We go round with a light hammer before quoting anything. Hollow render has already parted from the background and cannot be saved by a coating over it. The hollow areas are marked, photographed and measured, and it is that area, not the size of the bungalow, that moves the price.

Hacking off and preparing the background. Where a coat has gone we hack off to the blockwork or brick, clean down what is left, cut out loose or spalled material and let the wall dry. A primer or a slurry key goes on a dense or dusty background. Then the beads, and on a bungalow there are a lot of them: angle beads on the corners, stop beads at every reveal and against every frame, and a bellcast at the base to throw water clear.

Silicone thin coat. A mesh reinforced polymer basecoat with a flexible through-coloured topcoat scraped to a fine texture. It is the system we recommend most on the post-war cavity blockwork here: it copes with a little movement, sheds driven rain and stays breathable enough for a modern wall. Acrylic topcoats are the cheaper cousin and hold dirt sooner on a shaded elevation.

Monocouche. A single thick through-coloured coat, ruled off and scraped the following day. It suits a new blockwork extension or a garage that has to sit alongside the house, and it needs a properly flat, sound background to look right.

Sand and cement, dash and Tyrolean. The traditional two coat job still earns its place on plinths, garden and boundary walls, garage flanks and anything that gets knocked. Scratched, floated and then painted, dashed or given a Tyrolean finish. Many bungalows here already carry pebbledash, and where the backing is sound we can stabilise it, patch the bald areas and re-dash to match rather than take the lot off.

Cracking and staining. Fine crazing across a panel is shrinkage. A crack you can get a coin into, running out of a corner, is movement. Green and black streaking below a gutter is algae and wants a wash, not a new elevation. We will tell you which you have before anyone prices new work.

Render over external wall insulation. On a bungalow, EWI is unusually attractive, because there is so much wall for the floor area. The render then sits on a render carrier or a mesh basecoat on the board, and the thermal gain is only as good as the detailing at the sills, the eaves and the base.

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 single storey gable off a tower, a chalet bungalow with a dormer to work round, and a garage flank tight to a boundary 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.

On a two storey house the render at ground level is a small share of the elevation. On a bungalow it is most of it. The consequence is that the splash zone, the band of wall the rain bounces back onto off a path, a patio, a gravel bed or a border, covers a much larger part of the finish, and it is wet far more often than the wall above it.

Two mistakes follow, and we see both weekly. The first is render carried straight down past the damp proof course into the ground. Below that line the coat is in permanent contact with wet soil, it draws moisture up behind itself, and the frost takes the bottom foot off in flakes. The second is no bellcast bead at the bottom edge, so water running down the face wraps round the arris and tracks back under the render instead of dropping off it.

Done properly, the render stops above the damp proof course on a bellcast bead, and the wall below is finished separately in a hard sand and cement plinth that can be repaired without touching the topcoat. It is a small line on a quote and it decides whether the elevation looks the same in ten years. If you are comparing prices, ask each firm where the render stops at the bottom and what bead goes there. It is the quickest way to tell who has actually looked at your bungalow.

We cover West Moors, Ferndown, Three Legged Cross, Verwood and the BH22 addresses between 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.