rendering/dashing the base of walls?

[my-house-is-falling-down]

My house is completely pebbledashed.

Looking around at other pebbledashed houses there appears to be four approaches to how the bottom of the wall is finished.

1. Dash all the way to the base of the wall (i.e. where it meets the driveway/ground) or even below the level of the earth

2. Dash down to a bead/edge then render below the bead/edge to the drieway/ground

3. Dash down to a bead/edge then black paint below this to the ground (is this a special paint?)

4. Dash down to a bead/edge then clean brickwork below this to the ground

Does anyone know why/when these different approaches are taken please?

In some of these approaches, it seems the DPC is ignored and dashed/rendered/painted over? Does this no give rise to possible rising damp problems?

Does anyone know of a good guide to all this stuff?

Thanks in advance for any help/guidance you can give.

[jbonding]

You should fix bellcast beads a brick above the DPC and render to this then Clean the bricks up.The DPC should not be bridged.

[legs-akimbo]

As long as the bellcast sits above the dpc there is no reason at all that what is then classed as the plinth can not be float finished rendered if the brickwork does not want to be seen.

[jbonding]

Dont bridge the DPC with render or your gonna cause problems.

[my-house-is-falling-down]

many thanks for the very quick replies. the reason for my question is that my walls are finished in two different ways and I'm trying to understand what is right and why before sorting them out

A wall adjacent to the drive had a bellcast, pebbledash above, float finished render below. Problem was level of driveway was suspected to be above dpc level. I've hacked off the render below bellcast to identify the true level of the DPC in this area, cut back through tarmac and concrete to make a 6" wide channel a few inches deep (this was very tough going!), angled to drains in middle and at ends. Apart from a bit of repointing above & below the DPC, I'm trying to figure out whether I should/could re-render below the bellcast. Seems there are conflicting views on this? Surely if I rendered across the DPC for cosmetic purposes then moisture can bridge the DPC and cause problems? (Or does the waterproofing agent in the render mix prevent this)

On the far wall, I dug down to the footings to see how deep they were. The pebbledash on this wall goes right down to the footings! I hacked a bit of this away as well and found the DPC (so I know one exists in this part of the house). What should I do on this wall? Immediately above the DPC, the wall appears to be of breeze block (or similar) so would have to be very careful when hacking off any pebbledash there as it seems to break the block Any ideas why this would have been done this way originally and what I should do about it?

Any advice would be most appreciated

Thanks.