Hi - newbie to this forum. Apologies for the long post - wondered if anyone can help?
Our house altertions have called for us to render the rear elevation (fairly large 2 storey, 5 window openings including 1 folding-sliding doors @8ft downstairs, 1 french windows @ 4ft upstairs).
Take 1: Complete cowboys, k-rend onto bare block. They put in on in 1 coat, scraped immediately (rather than after 24 hours) causing the worst finish you've ever seen, put it on too thin so all block joints were visible through, then ran out half way through saying they'd come back to finish it off (...anyone predict big visible joints?..). Needless to say, we told them not to bother. Only upside, it was the builders men - and money - part of a fixed price contract. Several days of hacking off (for the builder) later, onto take 2.....
Take 2: Scared off from k-rend, chose to go with traditional sand-cement render. Put on in 2 coats (scratch, top). Looked ok on first inspection. Once the sun shone in the right (wrong?) direction though, very uneven finish. Worse, after a couple of weeks, small cracks appeared spanning out from the corner of several openings, and a couple of patches seemed "blown" - hollow when you tapped on them. These were the patches we could see and reach of course, don't know about the rest. The builder returned and cut out the cracks & blown areas, patching in. Now after another couple of weeks, some more hairline cracks are appearing from other openings, small cracks in the patches themselves, and one of the "blown" areas still appears to be blown.
We now have a choice.
Do we carry on as planned, ignore the bumps & cracks & hope Sandtex high-build (decorator recommended) will by and large cover the imperfections?
Or do we have another "chat" with the builder and point out this is NOT the norm for render, that maybe he should have used mesh reinforcement around openings (..recommended in one of the quotes we got...), get it sorted and forget about painting for now.
We're reluctant to start hacking off AGAIN, but if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Then again, maybe we're making mountains out of moleills - we don't know having not had render before (...and won't plan on doing so again!).
Any advice gratefully received.
Jon
Our house altertions have called for us to render the rear elevation (fairly large 2 storey, 5 window openings including 1 folding-sliding doors @8ft downstairs, 1 french windows @ 4ft upstairs).
Take 1: Complete cowboys, k-rend onto bare block. They put in on in 1 coat, scraped immediately (rather than after 24 hours) causing the worst finish you've ever seen, put it on too thin so all block joints were visible through, then ran out half way through saying they'd come back to finish it off (...anyone predict big visible joints?..). Needless to say, we told them not to bother. Only upside, it was the builders men - and money - part of a fixed price contract. Several days of hacking off (for the builder) later, onto take 2.....
Take 2: Scared off from k-rend, chose to go with traditional sand-cement render. Put on in 2 coats (scratch, top). Looked ok on first inspection. Once the sun shone in the right (wrong?) direction though, very uneven finish. Worse, after a couple of weeks, small cracks appeared spanning out from the corner of several openings, and a couple of patches seemed "blown" - hollow when you tapped on them. These were the patches we could see and reach of course, don't know about the rest. The builder returned and cut out the cracks & blown areas, patching in. Now after another couple of weeks, some more hairline cracks are appearing from other openings, small cracks in the patches themselves, and one of the "blown" areas still appears to be blown.
We now have a choice.
Do we carry on as planned, ignore the bumps & cracks & hope Sandtex high-build (decorator recommended) will by and large cover the imperfections?
Or do we have another "chat" with the builder and point out this is NOT the norm for render, that maybe he should have used mesh reinforcement around openings (..recommended in one of the quotes we got...), get it sorted and forget about painting for now.
We're reluctant to start hacking off AGAIN, but if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Then again, maybe we're making mountains out of moleills - we don't know having not had render before (...and won't plan on doing so again!).
Any advice gratefully received.
Jon
