Rendering in Yarmouth
Bungalow country, where the render is at eye level and the bottom two feet of the wall decide how long it lasts.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Better than a third of the homes here are bungalows, and on a bungalow the wall is most of what anyone sees. Everything happens at eye level: the texture, the colour, the beads and the line where the render stops at the bottom. There is nowhere for a rough detail to hide.
The jobs are usually one of four. A hollow band low down where rain has splashed back off a path for thirty years. A crack from a window corner. Dash flaking off the weather side. Or a wall that looks tired and streaky and the owner cannot tell whether it wants cleaning or recoating.
We tap the whole elevation instead of the patch you rang about, look hard at the base and the openings, and put the answer in writing with each item on its own line. A low building is quicker and cheaper to get to than a two storey one, which changes what is worth doing. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
The work
Render on a low building, where every detail shows
Silicone thin coat. Primer, a polymer basecoat with glass fibre mesh bedded into it, then a through-coloured silicone topcoat floated to a scraped texture. Flexible, water shedding and colour stable, and on cavity blockwork it is the usual answer. On a bungalow the texture choice matters more than usual, because you look at it from two metres rather than from the far side of a road.
Monocouche. A single through-coloured coat put on thick and scraped back the next day. It suits a long plain bungalow elevation well, provided the background is sound and the weather holds for the week. It is unforgiving of a patched wall.
Sand and cement, pebbledash and Tyrolean. Scratch coat, float coat, then a smooth face, a dry dash thrown on green, or a Tyrolean flicked on. Plenty of the post-war bungalows carry a dash, and matching one is a question of aggregate size and colour. A sample panel goes up first.
Lime on the old harbour cottages. Solid walls built before 1919 have no cavity and get rid of rain by drying out through their own face. They want lime, two or three coats, hair gauged into the base. A cement or acrylic coat seals that face and the moisture ends up inside the house instead.
Tapping and hacking off. Blown render has parted from its background. Tapping the whole wall is the only way to know how much, and on a low building it can be done properly from a tower rather than a full scaffold, which keeps the survey cheap and the answer honest.
Cracks, delamination, algae and staining. Crazing is shrinkage and cosmetic. An open crack is movement or a bead that has failed and needs cutting out and reinforcing. Green and black staining on a shaded elevation is organic growth and comes off with a soft wash, not a pressure lance.
Render over external wall insulation. Insulation board fixed as a render carrier, then mesh, basecoat and topcoat. Bungalows have a large wall area for the floor area inside them, so the thermal gain is proportionally better here than on a house, and Approved Document L sets what a renovated wall is expected to reach. Every reveal gets thicker, so cills and pipework are planned in advance.
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.
Renewing an existing render like for like is maintenance and needs no application. Rendering a wall that has never been rendered, or a marked change of colour on a street elevation, is a change of appearance and the Planning Portal sets out when external wall work needs permission. There are 48 listed entries in and around the town, mostly in the old streets by the harbour, and those need consent first. Isle of Wight Council is the authority.
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 detached bungalow with a clear path round it, a chalet bungalow with a dormer to work around and a harbour cottage on a narrow lane are three different platforms before any material arrives. 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. On a low building it is quicker to make safe than on a house, so a loose panel over a path or a door is usually a same visit job rather than a scaffold job. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
On a bungalow, the bottom 600mm decides everything
A bungalow has a lot of wall for its floor area and very little of it is up in the air. That is good news for the cost, because the access is a tower rather than a full scaffold on most of them, and a whole elevation in one system becomes affordable where on a three storey house it would not be. It is less good news for the detail, because the part of the wall that fails first is also the part you stand next to every day: the bottom two feet.
That band takes splash back off paths, patios and flower borders, snow lying against it, and hose water when somebody washes a car. If the render was taken straight down to the ground with no bellcast bead, as it was on most post-war bungalows here, water wicks up behind it and the coat lets go from the bottom upwards, which is why so many walls sound hollow low down and solid at head height. When we renew an elevation the base gets a bellcast so the coat stops with a drip clear of the ground, and where a path or a raised bed sits hard against the wall we will say so, because no render will survive being buried. Fixing the ground is often cheaper than fixing the wall twice.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Yarmouth, Norton, Thorley and across towards Freshwater and Shalfleet, broadly PO41, with Isle of Wight Council for planning and building control. 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
Yarmouth questions we get asked
Is there more wall on a bungalow than people expect?
Per square metre of wall, usually yes, because much of it can be reached from a tower rather than a full scaffold and the platform stands for less time. There is more wall per home than people expect though, so the total is not always lower. The quote splits access from the render so you can see which part is which.
What texture should we choose if we are looking at it up close?
Something finer than you would pick for a two storey house. A coarse scraped finish reads well from a distance and looks heavy at arm's length, and it holds more dirt where a hedge or a border brushes it. We put a sample panel on the wall so you can judge it at the distance you will actually see it from.
Our path runs right up to the wall. Does that matter?
It matters a lot. Rain hitting a hard surface bounces straight back onto the bottom of the render, and if the coat runs down to the ground there is no way for that water to leave. A bellcast bead, a gravel margin or a lowered path all help, and any of them is cheaper than re-rendering the same band twice.
Can you work round a conservatory or a carport?
Yes, that is normal on a bungalow. It changes the access rather than the render: sometimes a tower goes inside the structure, sometimes a section is worked off a hop up with the glass sheeted. It is priced as its own line so you can see what the obstruction is costing rather than having it buried in a rate.
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Get the base detail right the first time
Thomas taps the elevation, looks at the ground against the wall and itemises the system he would put on it. The visit and the written quote are free.