A guide to Painting pebbledash, render and Tyrolean masonry walls

Pebbledash, Spar dash and Tyrolean exterior wall finishes: Why painting them with normal paint is sometimes NOT such a good idea and why a wall coating from NEVER PAINT AGAIN is a better option.

We often get contacted by homeowners who have pebbledash on the exterior walls of their house and whilst pebbledash is generally a long life exterior wall finish, it certainly has its drawbacks!

This article explores the pro’s and con’s of pebbledash and the action and steps you can take to do something about it!

Pebbledash exterior wall coatings

Pebbledash is an exterior 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.

Applying pebbledash to an exterior wall by hand.

Tyrolean exterior 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?

A guide to painting pebbledash and render walls

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.

Inflexible pebbledash can crack easily.

Pebble dash 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 paint rollers, cutting deep scratches in their hands & the loss of patience when they realises its 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!?

What happens if the DIY nut tries to paint Pebbledash?

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! NPA WALL COATINGS 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 isn’t 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.

Local builders don’t like wall coating firms!

General Builders dont 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 added 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.

Brands of Wall Coatings

The most well known brands are: K-rend, Pro rend, Fibrocem, baumitBayosan, cullomix, webertec, Epsicon, thermaloc. There are other companies who offer this. Coloured renders are quite 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.

Cheap pebbledash painters?

DEFINITELY 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.

Bringing colour to a pebbledash wall.

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.

How pebbledash coatings are applied.

Exterior wallcoatings, no matter how they are applied, are best explained as long life paints, with render/stucco elements to them. Indeed, some wall coating 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 its 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 doesnt normally have to ever return to the site, ensuring customers are VERY happy bunny to say the least!

Choosing a good pebbledash painting company.

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 wall coating 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.

FOR PRICE ENQUIRIES, GO TO THE CONTACT PAGE.

Or call the team today on 0800 970 4928

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

Re published march 2011.

This is an original article by the editor of Never Paint Again. You may NOT copy this or quote sections without our permission!