Rendering is nothing but covering your home’s walls with cement, silicon, or some sort of acrylic to add a smooth texture to the walls. While the process itself isn’t very hard and expensive, there are some long-term issues associated with rendered houses. Let’s look at some of the problems you may face with a rendered house.
Why Do People Render Their Homes?
Before speaking of the cons, it’s important to know why house rendering even exists in the first place. House rendering is generally for those who want to maintain the elegance of their house but don’t want to deal with the trouble and added cost of hiring a decorator to paint the walls every year. The charges quickly add up and dramatically increase your house’s maintenance costs in the long run. In that case, house rendering comes to the rescue. Paint on rendered walls sticks better and longer, that is if the render is of high quality.
Rendering refers to the technique of covering walls with gradual layers of cement mortar or other types of render mixes, which is usually done by an expert plasterer. It is one of the simplest and easiest ways to update a home, and it can considerably boost the property’s market value. People opt to render their homes because it is a quick and easy way to renovate an older home or give it a much-needed makeover. Compared to bare brick finishes, a rendered finish on a home’s walls is more attractive, cleaner, and sophisticated.
There are numerous practical advantages to rendering your home. It can increase your home’s overall fire rating while also adding waterproofing to the walls. However, not every rendering job is made equal. Numerous things can go wrong with rendering, and you should be aware of them if you’re considering purchasing a rendered house.
Typical Problems that are Closely Associated with Rendered Houses
- Cracks
Render is a hard wall coating that is applied to the outer walls of a house to protect the bricks that make up the construction, as well as to consolidate the walls and add strength to the structure. However, a rendered wall is highly susceptible to cracks, some of which can be pretty serious and alarming.
- Hides the Brickwork
Most builders use renderings to hide the poor brickwork of the house. After all, it’s the brickwork that counts the most for a house’s long-term durability, excessive cost savings in the brickwork may cause serious problems. For example, what appears to be a little and thin scar up the wall could be masking the extremely weak and brickwork beneath. This is one major problem that customers experience after buying a pre-made house.
- Damp and Mould
Damp easily penetrates rendered walls, causing mold inside which can cause respiratory issues like Asthma. It is typically produced by a badly maintained external wall that has had problems (such as cracks) that have been allowed to worsen, and if any of the following apply to your property, it’s quite likely that you have dampness. A broken or leaking pipe, the ground outside stacking up at the base of a wall, breaching the DPC, and a missing roof tile. Most commonly, dampness is caused by poor maintenance and ignorance of small issues including minor cracks. In any case, the situation gets mostly worse when it comes to rendered walls.
- Render Failure
In the worst case, the entire render can fail if left unchecked. High levels of damp within the walls might cause render failure. Frost and moisture become trapped between the wall and the render, causing hairline fractures in the beginning. If these fractures are left untreated for an extended period, the render will finally fail. Failure of an outside render might eventually lead to rot, humidity, and mould in the interior of a structure as well. Not only does this damage the appearance of your home, but it’s also bad for the people living inside.
- Paint Failure (Flaking)
Paint failure, also known as paint adhesion loss, is the weakening of the binding between a layer of paint and the surface it is applied to. This failure can occur if the coat is thin, inconsistent, or if the application has failed adhesion. A seemingly good coat of paint can fail without adequate preparation and know-how, destroying your walls and requiring you to start over. Paint needs a smooth and clean surface to stick perfectly; a poor-quality render is all it takes for the paint to fail. Excessive dampness caused by leakages may increase the chances of flaking even further.
If You’re Buying a Rendered House…
With all that’s said, it’s still impossible to look at a perfectly rendered house and not immediately like it. However, you must take care of a few things before putting all your money on the line.
First up, take note of the render’s appearance and look for any flaws. Is the job appearing to be even and smooth all the way around the wall? Are there any visible fractures or bumps in the rendering? Is the render separated from the wall in any way? Are there any indentations in the render that appear to be sunken that indicate hollow areas?
Furthermore, cracking is one of the most serious and deadly problems with home rendering. If the property’s rendering is broken, large sheets of render can fall from the wall, posing a danger to anybody inside and potentially costing you thousands of dollars in repairs. If you detect any of these flaws in the rendering job on any of the property’s walls, you should reconsider putting your money on the line for the house.
Conclusion
A rendered house, as good as it may seem, can often be a double-edged sword. Rendered houses look elegant and sophisticated with a paint job that fits right in. However, what lies beneath the smooth render? You’ll never know for sure. You’ll never know the quality of the brickwork beneath the render until the effects become apparent (e.g. cracks, fractures). Still, rendered houses don’t always cause problems, provided that you inspect them carefully before buying.
