Painting pebbledash, Spar dash & Tyrolean masonry walls?
Pebbledash, Spar dash and Tyrolean exterior wall finishes.
This is an original article by the editor of Never Paint Again. You may NOT copy this or quote sections without our permission!
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Pebbledash exterior wall coatings
Pebbledash is an exterior textured wall covering, that is essentially a coat of sand and cement based render, with the top coat having small stones or pebbles being literally, thrown at the wet surface by an operative or contractor. This exterior wall finish was made popular here in England and Wales since about the 1920’s, when housing was in greater demand, and builders were forced to cut costs wherever they could. Pebbledash finishing on external walls was ideal for this purpose as, not only was it fashionable at the time, but it could be utilised to cover up poor quality brickwork, especially with a shortage of skilled men in the construction industry after world war 1.
Tyrolean exterior texture wall coatings
Tyrolean is a cement based textured exterior wallcoating which is hand applied using a tool called a tyrolean gun.
This is a special bucket with a spindle in the middle rather like a hairbrush. When cement mixture is introduced into the gun, the handle turns the hairbrush-like spiked cylinder, which picks up the cement, and is then flicked onto the exterior wall surface in small splats. The tool is hand operated and can be very exhausting to use all day! There are air and electric powered versions available, however nothing beats the old method of doing it and NPA strives to use a mixture of traditional building skills, and modern technology, to create a fantastic and long life transformation of any home, usually within the space of a week!
This is repeated constantly until a desired cement texture is achieved on the wall. It is very difficult to achieve good results on this method without fine warm weather and a highly skilled operative coating a well prepared wall. It can be applied as a cement colour (depressing!) or it can be coloured with the addition of an “admixture”, which is a coloured dye for the water in the mix. It is brittle, often quite short term, provides no protection against the weather and often finishes patchy. Tyrolean often cracks and in many cases, as the tyrolean wall coating applied is so thin & brittle, it falls off. We mean Literally: falls off.
So perhaps be careful when walking past a Tyrolean finished house in the future?
Pebbledash and tyrolean continued to grow as a popular method of covering the external walls of a house quickly and cheaply. The 1st pebbledash was often of a quite high quality, and offered the home at least rudimentary protection from the ravages of the British climate, such as wind driven rain, hail, snow etc. The major problem with pebbledash is that it is not completely watertight, although quite correctly, it does allow the exterior walls to “breathe”, that is to allow escaping of some moisture, whilst not letting too much in. However the main problem is that both pebble dash and tyrolean are not totally damp proof or waterproof, and, especially in exposed or coastal locations, water can be driven into the wall by the wind, which then freezes.
After this moisture has frozen in voids (tiny holes) in the sponge-like wall, it expands within the wall, just like an ice-cube expands in the ice tray, so does the water in the wall.
Painting Spar dash
Original pebble-dash, from the 1920's, used exactly what it says, pebbles! They were often dredged up from coastal inlets and beaches..........however nowadays, much pebbledash is actually Spar dash, (or Spa dash) which is small "chipped pieces" of flint, granite and other stone, to create the same effect. Spar dash is a cheaper substitute to pebbles, and is much rougher, with various nasty sharp edges, as opposed to Pebbledash, which is usually a much smoother textured exterior wall covering. Many homes built in the 1930's with the traditional original pebbledash have survived intact to this day, although most are showing the signs of end of life now and really need either replacing, or being repaired and treated with an exterior wall coating system. The pebbledash being applied today, and common from the 1960's onwards, will NOT last long, so be warned if you are thinking of having your house external walls re-pebbledashed, it could be a waste of money!
Pebbledash is not flexible at all, so if pressure is applied from within the moist wall, the wall surface has no option but to try and expand to compensate. This is also true of some tyrolean surfaces. Unfortunately, pebbledash is not flexible and as such, cracks. This then allows more water in, and thus accelerates the cracking even further.
A crack in an outside wall of only 2mm wide, stretching length ways over 10 metres, actually is equivalent to a HOLE in the side of a house the size of a tennis ball!
(Think about it…..)
Many home owners are now finding that there are alternatives to pebbledash, sometimes involving it being covered over, sometimes it means removing the pebbledash coating altogether in favour of a replacement external wall finish that is more pleasing, or in some cases, more fashionable and in keeping with the neighbouring houses! Many people give up altogether and resign themselves to the fact that the pebbledash on the outside walls of their home looks awful, and always will look awful! However…………
Some people mistakenly try and paint over the pebbledash themselves!
After wearing out about 20 brushes, breaking 10 rollers, cutting deep scratches in their hands & the loss of patience when they realises it’s taken 2 months to paint one wall, and it still looks awful, perhaps it’s time to get the specialists around your house to do the job correctly, safely and expertly!?
If you try and paint a wall which is pebble dashed, the following WILL happen: 1) The wall will dry patchy and uneven. 2) You will use a huge amount of paint and the porosity of the substrate will soak up the masonry paint, which is in essence only coloured water! 3) You will wear out lots and lots of rollers and brushes. 4) You will make a lot of mess. If you run a brush over a very rough or textured surface, the wall will "flick" the hairs of the brush, so it is unavoidable to not get paint on windows, doors, floors, pets, and yourself! 5) You will not offer the wall any protection, unlike exterior wallcoatings which offer complete protection against the weather (and no, we are not just talking about our own products either! Wethertex is a good brand of coating, as is Tex cote from Andura. Both these products behave in a SIMILAR fashion to our own exterior coating. (we respect their trade marks, we are just illustrating how good their products are..........which is nice of us isnt it?). 6) If you have damp in your home, a wall coating will cure it, masonry paint will not. 7) You will probably end up giving up and call a texture coating company instead!
Pebbledashed and tyrolean textured walls are also often quite porous so they need to be specially treated anyway before it is economic to apply any new covering to the wall at all.
What are the options for pebbledash and tyrolean walls?
• Do nothing: Not quite the positive approach, but some people dont seem to care about their house………
• DIY painting: as outlined above, is NOT recommended at all, and only the foolish would attempt it. Or those with very thick skin on their hands and an awful lot of time on them too!
• Having a new coat of tyrolean or pebbledash: Not good if the home owner is sick of looking at it! However if people must, then it can be quite a big and expensive job, especially if the consumer wants it done properly. Cowboy builders would only knock off the loose topcoat, and render, with a thin skim with pebbles over that.
• The pebbledash or spa dash coating may last about 3 years being realistic. However, a professional pebbledash company may knock off all the render, which is sometimes problematic if the base render scratch coat is firmly adhered to the wall. Knocking this off can in many cases, rip out the existing mortar joints and the face of the bricks and blocks that actually hold and bind the structure of the house together! Can be VERY dodgy and in some exceptional cases may invalidate your home insurance, and make your home un-saleable, some may suggest.
• A good pebbledash job done with quality materials by a professional general builder or reputable contractor, may last for around 8 years, sometimes a bit more, which isn’t too bad and there are some very good companies around to call. General Builders don’t like wallcoatings teams though, as they say the maintenance free aspect deprives them of their annual work, plus they ALWAYS know how to do it cheaper and better apparently! (Yeah, right!)
* Coloured render: (sometimes known as "through colour" render as the pigment or colour is inherent in the coating and is not aded on top) There are some companies who now offer a coloured render system. This is essentially a modified version of traditional sand and cement rendering, and is applied in a similar fashion. The most well known brands are: K-rend, Pro rend, Fibrocem, baumitBayosan, cullomix, webertec, Epsicon, thermaloc. There are other companies who offer this. Colored renders are qute often used on brand new built houses and large commercial developments. Having a coloured render though is NOT a cheap option, so care must be taken when choosing a suitable exterior wall covering from your home. Consider whether the money spent will be good value or not. DEFINATELY DO NOT CHOOSE THE CHEAPEST QUOTE with this system and ONLY choose a product with a BBA certificate or equivalent. In some cases, some products have known to crack under direct sunlight. Overall, a good system but can be expensive. Usually has to be applied by a specialist and is more suited to new builds.
• Exterior wall coating. Available in trowel-on wallcoating, Spray applied coatings, roller applied wallcoating or trowel and roller applied wallcoatings. Probably the easiest, quickest and most value for money way to refurbish and repair pebbledashed or tyrolean, or even brick and masonry (masonary) walls.
An exterior wall coating, some may suggest, is the ideal alternative to the problem of what to do with a pebbledashed wall, especially when the home owner is not wishing for their home to look like pebbledash any longer! The range of colours available, and the process they use in repairing the wall and binding the existing pebbledash with “bagging”, or latex modified render, can save a lot of time, a lot of hassle, and in the long term, a lot of money.
Exterior wallcoatings, no matter how they are applied, are best explained as long life paints, with render/stucco elements to them. Indeed, some wallcoating products are actually made with hard minerals in them, such as perlite, or crushed marble. This gives the coating strength. This is combined with high quality colour pigments and dyes, flexible resins, fungicides etc. Some coatings are even made with an amount of glass fibre (grp) in them, so the “name of the game” in exterior coatings is low maintenance, long life and strength!
An external masonry wall coating is not designed to be a cheap option, although the savings do come in the long term, (very much so), but it’s a one stop solution, that often means it saves you more time and hassle than ever realised! It’s not a quick fix, it’s not meant to be, and ALL houses surely deserve far more care and respect than a quick cheap job by cash in hand type builders?
For a start, a high performance coating is always a one off job and the company doesn’t normally have to ever return to the site, ensuring customers are VERY “happy bunny’s” to say the least! Secondly many operate a national or international service, have a good customer care and liaison policy with helpful, friendly and knowledgeable staff. Thirdly an exterior wall coatings, be it trowel, roller or spray applied, will cover up more bad DIY done by previous homeowners or cowboy builders, hide building joins in extensions, repair cracks and hollow render and essentially make the house water tight yet breathable with microporous technology constantly flexing to suit the mood of the house!
No more cracking, no more fading, no more chipping or peeling! A wallcoating will last in some cases for up to 25 years, many products offering a guarantee for part of that period.
Some would advocate that this method is the one stop solution to repairing and painting the typical house with no fuss, hassle or worry & handled by experts.
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? PICK UP THE PHONE OR EMAIL US!!
For more information on finding out more information about exterior coating on your pebbledashed home or commercial property, please click on the links at the top of the page, or click our logo in the top left hand corner to go back to the home page. We can apply our spray applied exterior wallcoating to the following surfaces:
Pebble dash
Spar Dash
Asbestos sheet.
Stucco
Harling
Masonry (masonary)
Stone
Concrete
Brick (Painted and unpainted)
Rock
Render/plaster
Tyrolean and dry wall.
Wood (in some cases)
We also will be opening our range further to include:
* Modified renders
* Floor coatings
* Roof coatings
* Pliolite exterior masonry paint
* UPVC fascias and soffits.
* UPVC doors and windows.
* Industrial and contract flooring.
And a host of other things, under wraps for now as others tend to copy us…………
Choose a wall coating for your pebbledashed home. We can transform it from a dump to a palace, usually in less than week, even during winter!
G A. Bell. Bsc.(hons.).Pg.Dip.Cert.Ed.
January 2006
Plymouth, England. UK
If you are looking to get quotes for an exterior wall coating to repair and beautify your pebbledash or other masonry wall, why not get in touch with us? Some discounts still available, but be quick, we're getting very very busy!
There are other quality paints available on the market, both in europe and in the usa, just for reference, the most popular brands we can think of are as follows: Dulux, leyland, johnstones, berger, blackfriars, behr, sherwin williams, benjamin moore, ralph lauren, glidden, zoffany, english heritage, Sanderson, cole and son, fired earth, Farrow and Ball, Little Greene, Crown, Pratt and Lambert and so and so on.........
There are far more, although NPA does not infer that we stock the above brands. We respect their copyrights by posting these words, we would be happy to review these products if the companies actually approached us and asked. Also, to answer a user's question, we wont be reviewing PAINT SHOP PRO, MICROSOFT PAINT OR ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE ACTUAL TOPIC OF PAINTING and ART! (wrong context for a start!)
(this is posted due to the sometimes quite eclectic questions we get asked here at npa!)
Anyway, please read on, go to the top of this page and navigate with the links on the left hand side bar. Thanks again.
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