Rendering in Winterborne Stickland

Lime render is the right answer on anything solid walled and old in Winterborne Stickland. Two or three coats of lime, hair gauged in the base, worked well into the background and kept damp and covered while it cures. It is soft, breathable and forgiving of a wall that moves a little, which is exactly what a mixed background needs. Finished with a float or limewash, never a modern paint.

Reinforcing across a change of background. Where flint meets brick, or cob meets a plinth, the two sides take up water differently and move differently. A mesh or a scrim bedded across the junction spreads that movement instead of letting it concentrate in one line, and it is the single detail that decides whether the crack comes back.

Taking hard render off. Cement on an old Winterborne Stickland wall comes off by hand and in sections, because the wall behind it is softer than the coat and a breaker takes both. Tapping first tells us how much of it has already parted from its background.

Silicone thin coat and monocouche. Primer, a polymer basecoat with mesh through it, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat scraped back, or a single thick monocouche coat. These belong on the modern houses, the extensions and blockwork outbuildings, with beads, stop ends and a bellcast at the base. They do not belong on an old solid wall.

Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Where the background suits it, a scratch and float coat with a dry dash thrown on green or a Tyrolean flicked on is a straightforward repair. Matching an existing dash is aggregate size and colour, so a sample panel goes up first.

Cracking, delamination and staining. Fine crazing is shrinkage and cosmetic. A straight crack that follows a line across a wall is telling you about the wall rather than the render. Green algae and black staining come off a sound coat with a soft wash and never with pressure.

Render over external wall insulation. Board fixed as a render carrier, then mesh, basecoat and topcoat over it, with Approved Document L setting what a renovated wall should reach. It is a good job on modern construction and the wrong one on a breathable old wall, and we will say which yours is.

Measuring the wall is quick. The price comes from what is already on it and what it is built of.

Hollow or sound. Where the old render on a Winterborne Stickland house still grips good brick, it can be patched or overcoated. Where it rings hollow, or pebbledash is lifting, it all comes off back to the wall, and you cannot tell which from the lane. Thomas taps every elevation before he writes a figure.

Flint, brick and cob in one wall. In a Winterborne Stickland wall, each material moves and takes up water in its own way, and where two meet, render cracks first. Mesh, beads and a render with some give in it are part of the job on a wall like that.

Choosing the render. Sand and cement, monocouche, silicone thin coat and lime each cost and behave differently. An old solid wall has to dry outwards, and a stiff or plastic-heavy coating seals the damp in until it shows on the inside.

The weather side. The south west face takes the driven rain. Bellcast beads, drips over openings and a clean stop at the base earn their keep most on that elevation.

Scaffold time. The platform stays up for every coat, under the work at height rules.

Ask other quotes which render and how many coats, whether the old is hacked off or overlaid, and whether bellcast and stop ends are included.

Walls in these valleys were built from what was to hand, which is why so many of them are layered: flint rubble with brick bands and brick at the corners and openings, cob raised off a stone or brick plinth to keep it out of the wet, and a century of later patching in whatever was cheapest at the time.

Each of those materials pulls water out of a fresh coat at a different rate, holds it for a different length of time and moves a different amount with heat and damp. Render is a thin rigid skin over the top of all that, so the strain concentrates exactly where one material meets another.

That is why the classic failure in Winterborne Stickland is not a random crack but a straight one, running horizontally along a plinth line or vertically down beside a brick quoin. Filling it achieves nothing, because the movement underneath has not changed. What works is preparing each background properly rather than uniformly, controlling the suction so the coat cures evenly across the whole wall, and bedding mesh across every change of material so the movement is spread over a width instead of concentrated in a line. It is slower and it shows on a quote as preparation rather than as render. If a price for an old mixed wall does not separate those out, it has been measured off the road.

Winterborne Stickland lies roughly 19.1 miles up the road from our Boscombe base on Wolverton Road, at number 80a. We render in the village, Winterborne Whitechurch, Turnworth, Milton Abbas and the villages towards Blandford, broadly DT11, with Dorset Council for planning and building control.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales and numbered 15471719, is owned by Thomas Hannen. He taps your walls and prices the job himself. You will find a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the itemised written quote come free. Before you book a visit in Winterborne Stickland, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Winterborne Stickland 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.