Rendering in West Moors

Sounding the elevation comes first. We go round a West Moors house 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 on a West Moors house 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 would recommend 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 West Moors 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 in West Moors 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.

Area is easy to measure. The old finish and the wall under it are what set the cost. Low walls, simple platforms. A single storey gable goes up off a tower, and that keeps access down compared with a two storey house. A dormer to work round, or a garage flank against the boundary, adds time. The platform stays up through every coat, and the work at height rules make it a priced line.

What is on there now. Many West Moors houses of this era have render panels, spar dash or pebbledash on part of the front. Tapping tells us how much has let go. Where it has come away from the blockwork, it has to be taken back to a sound surface and bagged, which is slow and cannot be judged from the road.

The system. On the cavity walls in West Moors, a silicone thin coat, a through-coloured monocouche or traditional sand and cement all work, and they differ in price, colour life and how they handle movement. Insulated render adds boards, fixings and mesh, and changes the sills and pipework.

Movement. Where the ground is clay, a wall with old cracks may need beads or a movement joint rather than render run straight over.

Ask other quotes which system and how many coats, whether the old dash comes off or is overlaid, and whether beads, bellcast and stop ends are included.

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.

The easy mistake at the base of a West Moors bungalow 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 other 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 render in West Moors, Ferndown, Three Legged Cross, Verwood and the BH22 addresses between them, under Dorset Council. From our Boscombe base, West Moors is 7.1 miles. The work is done by Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in West Moors, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen owns the firm and comes to tap the walls and price the job himself. We hold a verified 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade from a customer. There is no fee for the visit, and the written quote with each item set out is free.

Most repairs in West Moors 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.