Renewing pebble dash

[Dougie68]

We have employed a building contractor for a lot of work, including renewing the pebble dash on the front and side of the house.

A lot of it has cracked and blown and when chatting about it he said best to remove and replace. We agreed as don't want the house having huge patches.

The roughcaster has just been out with samples and said he'd hack off the blown bits and then patch and then another top layer to make the walls all the same. He said removing the bits that are still ok would damage the mortar.

I'm not sure if I should go with his suggestion or our contractor. I can see the benefit of not disturbing the stuff that's ok but not sure if he's looking to save time.

Would the extra weight not make the old render more likely to come off in the future?

Any help or advice is gratefully received!

Thanks

Dougie

 

[roughcaster]

I can see the builder's point and would agree that patching roughcast looks terrible. It is far better to remove any loose/hollow material, flush off/ fill out the patches, then prep/re-roughcast the whole wall. The ultimate of course is to remove everything, prep, scratch then re- roughcast.
I've re-roughcasted onto old roughcast a lot of times and never had a problem. As long as all the blown/loose areas are removed, and the rest given a good look over, it should be fine. He's right to say about causing damage, because sometimes, you can damage brickwork/blockwork trying to remove render, roughcast etc that's well bonded to the wall. If the old surface is solid, another coat on top of it wont make any difference.