Have you ever wondered why the gable end of your house is usually the coldest wall inside, or at least, it’s the wall that always needs painting, despite the rest of the house looking ok?
The gable end of a house (or “pine end” in Wales) is often the side wall of a 3 or 4 elevation house (a semi or a detached property.
It is sometimes it is a wall that is forgotten about, especially if it is not in view, or maybe down a side alleyway, or even a wall of YOUR house, which abuts into your neighbours garden, or onto the street.
The type and pitch (slope) of the ROOF of a house often dictates the shape and size of a gable end wall and therefore is often triangular in shape.
So what is a gable end?
A gable end is often non structural and non load bearing, since the main exterior walls of the home often bear the load of the roof and the gable end is merely an infill or stop-end.
One drawback with gable end walls, especially in exposed or coastal locations across the UK, is the fact that they “catch” the wind, especially if they have a deep overhanging soffit and eaves.
Protection of the particular wall is paramount on keeping your home warm and dry and damp free!
The editor of this very website was working, in 1987, in Portsmouth, installing a textured coating for the now defunct “London coating company”, when the famous Hurricane struck.
The next day there were many gable end walls that had been blown in, and some with the outer leaf ripped away from the house, leaving a trail of bricks in the street. Scary stuff.
Paint the gable end?
Gable end walls also sometimes are exterior surfaces which receive the worst of the weather and often get the most problems with damp and wind driven rain, making the walls inside actually feel cold to the touch.
If you live in an end of terrace, you will be at a disadvantage to your neighbours because you have an extra wall to be affected by weather, and an extra way to lose heat.
The other disadvantage is the fact that your house will have a MUCH larger wall area to paint, meaning your exterior house painting bill will be much higher than your neighbours as they only have 2 outside walls to worry about.
When we survey a job that has render problems, often the biggest issues we find, such as large cracks or patches of hollow render, it is usually on the gable end wall.
This can have a negative effect on your household heating bills, so protection of this wall is in some cases, more important than decoration.
Did you know……? ……..Gable end walls can be repaired, damp proofed, insulated, painted and wall coated by the experts at NEVER PAINT AGAIN, the UK’s largest exterior Wall Coating company.
Free quotes and all work guaranteed for 20 years!
But what if it was possible to combine wall protection AND decoration?
Cracked Render on gable end walls
Well, it IS possible to repair cracked gable ends, and weatherproof them at the same time so they will not give the homeowner any further problems.
This is possible by using one of our super tough and durable exterior wall coatings, applied by the team at Never paint again!
All instances occurring of cracked render are remedied before our external textured wall coverings are applied to the gable end of your home.
This means that all cracked external walls are made good again and none of repairs will be able to be seen once the paint coating has been applied.
Although of course we apply Exterior weatherproof wall coatings to ANY exterior house wall, we certainly have extensive wall restoration experience with gable end walls.
This means that we can give you an excellent price for any repairs and weatherproof coating of such elevations.
The repairs we can do also includes a complete re-render of any wall.
Having one of our special wall coverings on your gable end will PROTECT your house from:
- Frost, snow and ice
- Mould, green stains, algae and other organic growth
- Wall efflorescence
- Loose and missing mortar joints around bricks
- Wind driven rain
- Penetrating damp
- Hollow and cracked render/pebble dash etc.
- Fading and flaky paint and so on.
So in summary, houses that have a gable end wall have 2 main problems to think about.
The first is the SIZE of the wall.
Often a gable end of a house won’t have any windows or doors, just a flat surface, so the AREA to be painted is much larger than the rest of the house.
Even if a house is fairly humble, a large gable end can usually double the cost of having the whole house exterior painted.
This is also the case if you are having your home exterior painted by a local decorator using normal masonry paint. The sheer size, the surface area, is usually large and rarely has windows, so even normal painting will cost a fair bit.
Imagine having to do that every year?
The second and most important thing about having a house with a large gable end wall is the fact that it is normally exposed and, depending on what direction it faces, it can catch the weather full on.
This means it requires protection, and this is something that normal masonry paint will not and cannot provide.
So if you would like to find out more about how we can protect your gable end, in fact, your entire house if you wish, with one of our long life damp proof exterior wall coatings then contact us today for a free quotation to have your gable end repaired, weatherproofed and painted, along with a 20 year guarantee.
Call 0800 970 4928
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