April is when external work starts properly. The weather has settled enough for render to go on and cure, which means the old coat has to come off first. Render removal is the heaviest load a domestic property is likely to produce in a single job, and it is the one where sizing by eye goes wrong most dramatically. Our Crosby skip hire service supports a lot of this work through the spring.
Why so much of it is coming off around here
A great deal of the housing across this area was pebbledashed at some point in the middle of the last century, either as original finish or as a later attempt to deal with weather on a solid wall. Sand and cement render with a dashed aggregate finish was the standard answer and it went on thick.
It fails in a predictable way. Water gets behind it through a crack or a failed detail, and once it is behind, the render loses its bond with the wall in patches. Tap it and the hollow areas are obvious. Around Crosby, with weather coming in off the water and a lot of solid wall property, that failure is common and it accelerates once it starts.
The other reason it is coming off is that dense cement render on a solid wall traps moisture in the masonry, which is the opposite of what those walls need. A good proportion of the damp problems in older property here were created by a render that was meant to cure them.
The weight is the whole story
This is where people get caught. Standing at the bottom of a house looking up at a wall, nobody imagines that the coating on it amounts to much. Off the wall and in a heap, it is an entirely different proposition.
Render is sand and cement, and a traditional dashed coat is applied at real thickness across a large area. A full house strip produces a tonnage that will fill the weight allowance of several skips while the containers still look part used. It is dense, inert and unforgiving.
Our page on skip size versus weight limits explains why the weight limit and the volume limit work independently, and on this job the weight limit is the only one that will ever matter.
The right approach is smaller containers exchanged frequently rather than one large one. A 4 tonne midi skip on a running exchange moves more material than an oversized container that cannot be lifted once it is loaded. Where the job includes lighter waste alongside the render, an 8 tonne builders skip for that element separately usually works better.
Size the skip before the scaffold goes up
Render removal means scaffold, and scaffold takes the perimeter of the house, which is precisely where a skip would otherwise go.
Have the conversation with the scaffolder before erection rather than after. A gap left deliberately, or a plan for where material will be brought down to, costs nothing at that stage and is close to impossible to arrange afterwards. What we need is a clear approach for the lorry, room to work the arms and overhead clearance, and scaffold takes all three if nobody has thought about it.
The other point is the running exchange. If the container has to come out from under a scaffold lift every few days, that has to work for us as well as for you. Tell us at the outset that it is a render job and we will plan the collections around the programme.
Dust, and being a decent neighbour
Taking render off a wall creates an extraordinary quantity of dust, and it travels. On a terraced or semi detached street it goes over the boundary within minutes.
Sheeting the scaffold helps and most contractors will do it as standard. Damping down helps. Telling the neighbours before it starts helps most of all, because a week of dust that somebody was warned about is a very different conversation from a week of dust that arrived unannounced. Suggest they keep windows shut and washing in on the working days.
For anyone doing this themselves, this is not a job for a paper mask. Cement dust is caustic and the silica content in the sand matters over sustained exposure. Proper respiratory protection, eye protection and gloves.
Keep it clean and it gets recovered
Render, mortar and masonry are inert material. Clean and separated, that load crushes down and goes back into use rather than being disposed of. Our environmental and recycling page explains what happens once it reaches our site.
The things that spoil it are the ones that come off at the same time. Old timber battens, expanded metal lath, plastic beading, insulation boards where external wall insulation is being stripped, and the sheeting itself. Keep those aside rather than throwing them in with the render and the load stays useful.
Metal lath is worth separating in its own right. It has a scrap value and it is a nuisance in a load of otherwise clean rubble.
Older property and what to check first
Where a render is coming off a building of any age, it is worth knowing what is behind and around it before the tools come out. Old bituminous coatings, board behind render, and materials around soffits and bay roofs on properties of a certain period all warrant a look. Our guide to hazardous waste and why it cannot go in a skip covers what needs a licensed contractor rather than a container.
Permits and local coverage
Crosby sits within Sefton borough, so a skip on the road needs a permit from Sefton Council at £36 per month, and our guide to skip permits in Southport covers the process. On a render job the permit needs to cover the whole programme, because external work overruns for weather more than most.
We run this area daily, taking in Waterloo skip hire and Blundellsands skip hire jobs alongside Crosby, and our drivers are used to working around scaffold.
Ring us on 0151 909 6399 and tell us roughly how many elevations are being stripped. Our contact page is there if the contractor would rather deal with us directly.
