Posts

Protecting your home from winter weather

/in , /by

Winter is characterised by low temperatures, bleak weather and short days. It is a collection of conditions that can pose a serious problem for properties: cold and rainfall can combine to wreak havoc with home exteriors. But winter also brings with it the festivities of Christmas. We’re also getting into the Christmas spirit ourselves, by offering a very special gift to all of our customers – one that will help you ward off all of your winter weather-related woes!

Lower temperatures

Winter brings with it the lowest temperatures of the year. In the UK, in 2017 – the last year where a complete set of data exists – the average mean temperature for December was 4.2°C. Down 5.4°C from the yearly average mean temperature of 9.6°C. A distinct difference, that is all too tangible when you leave the house and brave the outdoors. Your house however, bears the brunt of this change as much as anything. When temperatures cycle below and above 0°C, freeze-thaw weathering can prise open any chips, scrapes or scratches in your home’s exterior paint job. And, in no time at all, your home’s walls can be ruined structurally as well as aesthetically.

Higher rainfall

The threat of damp is heightened in periods of high rainfall, making winter, as the UK’s season of heaviest rainfall, a particularly threatening period for UK homeowners. There are a number of paths damp can take to infiltrate your home: it can access your home through gaping flaws (cracked render, missing roof tiles) or less obvious ones (undersized gutters). Damp can become a problem without ever infiltrating your home – a poorly ventilated home with an absence of escape routes for moisture accumulated from washing, cooking, drying and even breathing – will suffer from damp.

Christmas Offer! 40% off selected services

At All Weather Coating, we are ushering in the festive period with a Christmas gift for all our customers: a whopping 40% off selected services. To find out how we can help you improve your home – at such a massive discount – get in touch with us today. However you’d like to contact us, you are absolutely welcome to. Whatever option you use – whether you ring us, email us or use our contact form – you will get through to one of our wall coating experts. They’ll ask you about your requirements, walk you through the All Weather Coating process and then, hopefully, help you arrange a free survey and quote.

If you do want to snap up this very special offer, you’ll have to act quickly. It expires in 21 days (just three weeks!) on 31st December. And with the hostile conditions of winter in full swing, if your home’s exterior isn’t adequately protected, you really should make seizing this opportunity a priority.

Avoid Cowboy Builders

/in , /by

London Wall Coating Results

Arranging for work to be completed on your house can be a stressful experience. Because the cost of work is typically so high, you need to be 100% confident with the builders’ ability to carry out the work to your exact specifications. And, based on research conducted by the Federation of Master Builders, fewer and fewer homeowners feel this way; because of the anxiety over hiring a competent builder, the UK is missing out on £10 billion worth of investment in home improvements.

You should treat hiring wall coating specialists with the same diligence and thoroughness you would hiring any other employee. To help you separate workers of repute and quality from those you are unlikely to receive a high standard of work from, we have put together a list of red flags to look for. In addition, we have also assembled a list of signifiers of an experienced, reputable and high-quality company that is genuinely committed to providing an excellent service to its customers.

Look for in-demand builders

As much as it can be inconvenient (and as much as it sounds counterintuitive), if a worker agrees to work on something almost immediately (as convenient and time-efficient as it may be) chances are that they aren’t of the quality you need. Generally speaking, an in-demand worker is a quality worker and struggling to secure a date for them to work on your house is no bad thing.

London wall coating reviews and recommendations

In the same way that interviewing a prospective job candidate, you would ask for a CV detailing their skills, accreditation and job history, you can ask the same thing of your prospective contractor. Are they accredited by their relevant authorities? Do they have a history of happy customers? Asking family, friends, and co-workers for recommendations is a good place to start; word-of-mouth endorsements are just as valuable as online reviews. After asking acquaintances, your next step should be to check for online reviews. The more websites you can find verifying a company’s quality, the better.

We have a stellar record on Trust a Trader, and you’ll find an extensive list of our past work on the case studies page of our website. Each and every project was a great success and it demonstrates our ability to tailor our services to match the style of properties in different areas. At risk of standing out like a sore thumb, for many customers, being able to retain a likeness to their neighbours’ houses is important for the street’s appearance as a whole.

Exterior wall coatings cost

Cost is a reliable indicator of quality. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. By getting quotes from a variety of companies (at least three), you’ll be able to reliably gauge what a fair price should be. Give us a call to arrange a free, no obligation quote.

Keep these three topics in mind when arranging for work to be completed on your house. For all your weatherproof coatings and render repair needs, get in touch with All Weather Coating for a consistently high-quality service.

Most common exterior paint problems

/in , , , /by

Wall Coating for a Hampton Property with exterior paint problems

Exterior paints have to be made of hardier stuff than their interior relatives. They have to be able to endure everything the weather can throw at them – whether that’s freezing cold or blisteringly hot temperatures, adverse weather conditions or even the more mundane, everyday occurrences of buffeting wind and rain. Because of these combative conditions, there are a lot of things that can cause exterior wall paint to deteriorate and a whole range of technical terms to describe them. To walk you through a few of these issues, the reasons why they appear, and how to ensure they never reappear, we have produced this post that sheds some light on two of the most common exterior paint problems.

Alligatoring

Alligatoring sounds a lot more exciting than the effect it actually describes, but it is nonetheless an apt comparison. It’s named after the reptile skin-like impression due to the effect it leaves on your home’s exterior. It causes the exterior to crack haphazardly into deep grooves, in much the same pattern as you’d expect to see on an alligator’s back.

Usually, alligatoring is the result of two incompatible paints being applied over one another; a glossy or hard oil enamel directly over a latex-based paint for example. It can also occur when the second layer of paint is applied before the first one has had enough time to fully dry. Oil paints, in particular, are especially vulnerable to alligatoring. Over time, they gradually lose their elasticity, making them susceptible to fluctuations in temperature.

Efflorescence

Efflorescence is the chemical term for white, powdery salt deposits that materialise on a painted surface. When water gets into a surface, salts from the brick or concrete dissolve. When the water later evaporates, these salts reappear on the outside of the surface as crystalline deposits. The solution to this problem is simple: keep water out of your home’s walls.

The solution?

Alligatoring and efflorescence might seem like quite disparate issues, but their genesis can be ascribed to the same root problem: a lack of due diligence on the part of the person doing the painting. Either they didn’t use the right kind of paint or their method of application was incorrect.

Rather than shouldering this responsibility yourself, or hiring someone without a track record of success, you should instead turn to an experienced and reputable exterior wall coatings company to complete the job. With a skilled team adept at handling a range of exterior wall painting projects efficiently, All Weather Coating is just that. Get in touch today to organise a site visit.

An Alternative to On-going Maintenance

/in , , /by

London Wall Coating Service in Loughton

 

Maintaining a flawless home exterior can be an extremely trying task. The weather ensures that demands on the homeowner are always precipitously high. Regular upkeep will remedy damage for a time, but it won’t stop it from returning. Without a more comprehensive solution, the spectre of damage will continue to haunt your home. All Weather Coating’s weatherproof coatings, backed by a 25-year guarantee, have been able to provide homeowners throughout London and its surrounding areas with a prolonged period of respite.  To walk you through the alternative to on-going maintenance, we have put together this post.

The problems

Every conceivable kind of weather can harm your home’s exterior. It doesn’t matter whether it’s sun, snow, sleet, ice, wind or rain; they’re all capable of inflicting damage. The UK experiences the full gamut of the elements, making it no surprise that UK homeowners suffer from an equally broad range of problems. There are, however, a few issues that stand out as being more commonplace than others: cracked render, penetrating damp, and of course, general wear and tear (which covers all fractures, scrapes, and scratches). Repairing cracked render, resolving a damp problem and rejuvenating a tired surface are well within All Weather Coating’s capabilities.

The process

All Weather Coating is uncompromising in its attention to detail. The meticulousness of their approach is encapsulated in the very first step of their application process – the survey stage. After liaising with a member of their team to arrange a site visit, a group will be dispatched to scrutinize your home’s exterior for flaws and vulnerabilities. With every scrape and scratch documented, their team of experts, further down the line, are able to carry out their repairs without running the risk of overlooking even a single blemish.

In its entirety, the All Weather Coating process is too large detail in this blog post, but to summarise; it involves a repair stage, a cleaning stage and a waterproofing stage followed by the application of the weatherproof coatings themselves. You can read about the whole process here.

The results

The difference in a property before and after a visit from All Weather Coating is startling. The transformative impact of the wall coating process is catalogued here. As well as curing any existing issues, the All Weather Coating process improves the exterior of your home’s durability. Going forward, it will be able to weather the elements and emerge unscathed, resigning the days of constantly working to keep your home’s exterior intact to history. The 25-year guarantee that accompanies the application of their exterior wall coatings is evidence of the strength of the company’s belief in the quality of their service and the materials they use.

Questions?

To organise a site visit, contact us by email or phone. Similarly, if you have any unresolved questions at all, please do not hesitate to get in touch. A member of All Weather Coating’s team will be more than happy to field any queries or concerns. Hopefully, we’ll be hearing from you shortly!

How much time are you wasting painting your home?

/in /by

weatherproof wall coatings

Painting the exterior of your property, in its entirety, is right up there with the most time-consuming DIY tasks. Just acquiring the right equipment – the perfect shade of off-white paint, a suitably sized ladder, the dustsheets you need to protect the rest of your home from stray flecks of paint, can take days. Actually doing the painting is laborious. Each side of the house is a project in itself, making completing all four a gargantuan effort. Straining to reach the uppermost corners of your home’s exterior is taxing, not to mention hazardous. All of the risk you have to shoulder, as well as the massive amount of time you have to invest, makes painting your home’s exterior an unenviable pursuit. Why do it yourself when you can entrust the task to specialists? They’ll do a better job and they’ll do it quicker.

For All Weather Coating, and many other wall coating specialists besides, a complete exterior painting job takes days and days. There is a preparation stage, a repair stage, a cleaning stage and a waterproofing stage – all before the weatherproof wall coatings can be applied. If it takes a professional team of specialists at least several days, how long is it going to take you? For the purposes of this post, in which we are going to contemplate some of the more desirable things you could be doing in the time it would take you to paint your home’s exterior, we are going to assume that this length of time is about two weeks. Assuming you work 7 hours a day, that’s 98 hours. What could that time more profitably be spent doing?

Fly to the moon

Apollo 11 launched on 16th July 1969 and landed on 20th July 1969. Travelling at a rate of around 7 miles per second, it took the spacecraft 75 hours and 56 minutes to enter the orbit around the moon, and an additional 33 hours, 44 minutes for mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin to set foot on the moon. You would spend less time travelling to the moon than you would, perched precariously at the top of your home, straining and stretching to paint your home’s eaves!

Watch the entirety of Breaking Bad… and its prequel Better Call Saul

Including its prequel Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad narrative spans eight years: from 2002 to 2010. Better Call Saul follows the trials and tribulations of the ethically dubious lawyer Jimmy McGill while Breaking Bad charts Walter White’s evolution from chemistry teacher to meth kingpin. The latter sees the two characters mix in the same circles. Both series are critically acclaimed and universally adored. In the 98 hours it would take you to paint your home’s exterior, you could watch both series in their entirety… and still have 4 hours left over.  The Better Call Saul series, to date, clocks in at around 32 hours while Breaking Bad lasts around 62 hours.

Watch Breaking Bad or fly to the moon? Regardless of their relative worth as accomplishments, they are both infinitely more desirable pursuits than attempting to paint the exterior of your home single-handedly. Next time you consider painting your home’s exterior on your own, just think of the sheer amount of time you’d have to invest – and how else you could spend that time!

The All Weather Coating application process

/in , /by

At All Weather Coating, we try to be as transparent as possible about the work that we do. Where possible, we like to give prospective customers a clear picture of our process. One of the ways that we can accomplish this is through our blog. That is why we have decided to lay out our application process in its entirety – from start to finish. Armed with this information, prospective customers have a better understanding of how our wall coating service unfolds and what to expect when the time comes to treat their own home. Without further delay then, here is how we apply textured exterior wall coatings to a home.

Calling us or sending us an email is enough to get the ball rolling, and before long, we will send a team out to your residence to conduct a full survey. Our team will slowly make their way around the affected area, taking care to note any faults or flaws. After consulting with you to get your thoughts on what kind of change you’d like to see in your property, we create a plan of the work that is to be completed.

As with any project, preparation is key – and we certainly don’t neglect its importance at All Weather Coating. We go to great lengths to ensure that unaffected parts of the home aren’t inadvertently damaged or covered in paint. Paths and gardens are protected by dustsheets; doors, windows, gutters and walls with paper and tape.

Once we are satisfied that the rest of your home is sufficiently out of harm’s way, we can start repairing cracks in external rendered walls. Using the original survey as a guide, our team will locate all noted faults. Small cracks are then filled in with adhesive epoxy resin while bigger cracks are patched up using a combination of bonding primers and sand and cement mixture. Previously rendered sections of the wall are treated in the same way to ensure a uniform finish – with bonding primers, sand and cement mixture. If it is a pebbledash wall we are dealing with, we spray grit into the treated surface to maintain consistency throughout. Damaged pointing is raked out and replaced.

The repair work having been completed, it is then time to clean the treated surface. Over time, grime, moss and algae accumulates on exterior walls. To rid your home of this unwelcome build-up, we use a wire brush. In the same way, flaking paint is removed.

After exterior wall repair and the cleaning process have concluded, our exterior house painters can then begin waterproofing your home using external wall coatings in a colour and texture of your choice. Outfitted with specialist equipment that allows the ratio of coating to air to be controlled, our experienced team will apply weatherproof coatings to your home’s exterior with great precision, resulting in a flawless finish. Once the masking has been removed, the process is complete.

To speak to one of our team about our wall coating service, you can contact us by phone, email or through this contact form.

Why exterior wall coatings?

/in , /by

Our wall coating service is our primary offering here at All Weather Coating. An amalgamation of the finest weather resistant materials, available in a range of colours and textures, our exterior wall coatings are extremely popular – but why are so many homeowners across the UK picking us over our competitors?

A weatherproof coating that works properly is a rarity. Over our years of fitting homes with exterior wall coatings though, we have been able to not only perfect our product but the method of application too. Our painting services, based in London, have consistently fulfilled our promises of a durable, impeccable-looking finish.

Appearance

The most immediately identifiable impact of an exterior wall coating service is a visual one. Beaten and battered over the years by the turbulent British weather, it doesn’t take all that long for an ill-protected exterior to begin to fade and wear away.

A vibrant, beaming exterior can very easily wane into a feeble, sickly, shadow of what it once was. With the help of a weatherproof coating service however, your home’s exterior can be restored to its former glory.

If you’d rather head in another direction aesthetically, we can accommodate that too. Whether the home exterior of your dreams is red, yellow, green, pink or somewhere in between, you can rest assured that you will find the perfect colour and textured exterior wall coatings for you at All Weather Coating.

Durability

Underlying the startling visual impact of our wall coatings is a vital protective quality – the importance of which cannot be overstated. Without a sturdy exterior, a home is exceptionally vulnerable. Infiltrating your home’s walls to ruin your interior, the likelihood of penetrating damp affecting your home is dramatically increased by a poorly outfitted exterior. Owing to the presence of hydrophobic silicone, our external wall paint is more than capable of repelling unwanted moisture.

In Britain, where rain is far from uncommon, it is fair to say that your home’s exterior needs to be able to endure its fair share of rain and emerge out the other side unscathed. Because of its weather resistant qualities, our external house painting service is able to make your home durable and impervious to damp.

Money-saving

The costs associated with treating and curing dampness can be prohibitively expensive, and by pre-empting the onset of damp with a precautionary preventative measure like damp-proofing paint for exterior walls, you can avoid these costs. While there is a short-term initial outlay involved with acquiring protective wall coatings, long-term, their preservative quality means you will save money. A testament to our confidence in the longevity of our wall coatings is our guarantee that they will last 25 years.

Overall then, the appeal of external wall coatings can be characterised in three primary ways.

Appearance-wise, an exterior wall coating service can really refresh and rejuvenate a tired-looking home exterior. Waterproof coatings’ ability to bolster your home’s durability is perhaps even more crucial. By helping your home stave off damp and other associated ills, the application of a resin wall coating can save you money long-term too.

To rejuvenate and refresh your home’s exterior, get in touch with us today.

How to repair a pebble dash wall

/in , , /by

Pebble Dash Repair London

Since its last sustained period of popularity post-war, public opinion of pebbledash has only deteriorated. A 2014 survey conducted by Go Compare found that a pebble dash exterior is considered one of the most off-putting features of a property – with 31% of all those who were surveyed declaring it undesirable.

If you are of the same opinion, you are going to want to find a way of removing and replacing pebbledash or, at the very least, improving it somehow. In this blog post, we outline the best ways to paint, render and repair pebbledash.

How much does it cost to pebbledash a house?

Before beginning any project, you first want to have a solid understanding of the financial commitment involved. In the case of pebbledash, costs can vary wildly depending on the kind of work you are having completed. Tearing down pebbledash and replacing it with another more desirable material can cost thousands of pounds.

A simple repainting can be more financially palatable. From one wall coating company to another, costs for an identical project can differ significantly. With All Weather Coating though, you can rest assured that you will receive the best possible price.

After arranging a site visit, our expert team will assess your property, your problem, and how you want to go about solving it, to put together a competitive fee that you will agree is both fair and affordable.

Why is pebble dash rendering so difficult to repair or replace?

Pebbledash (or roughcast) render can be extremely tricky to repair – especially if attempted without the necessary blend of experience and equipment. The same thing that makes pebbledash so resistant to weather is the same thing that makes pebbledash so difficult to remove and repair.

Composed of a mixture of lime, sand, gravel, cement, and a collection of small pebbles or stones, this amalgamation of hard-wearing materials comes together to create a thrown together but bulky exterior surface. Because the stones and pebbles are literally thrown into the mixture, they are the first to fall away as time passes – resulting in a fragmented surface.

Covering pebbledash with a fresh coat of paint is therefore insufficient. So too, is attempting to render over pebbledash – not only because it is difficult to recreate the same tone and texture of the fallen away pebbles, but also because it would be an extremely trying task to fill in the missing parts like a jigsaw.

How to repair roughcast render

So, if pebbledash can’t realistically be removed, or replaced with another layer of pebbledash, what is the best way to go about repairing a sub-par pebbledash surface?

The simple answer is exterior wall coatings from All Weather Coating. Even with the best masonry paint for pebbledash, painting pebbledash would ordinarily be a hopeless endeavor. Exterior weatherproof wall coatings change all that though.

From All Weather Coating, our external wall coatings are more than twenty times thicker than typical paint and are infused with water-resistant silicone – making them the perfect cure for a patchy pebbledash surface. With a method we have honed and refined over time, our team has had years and years of experience repairing pebbledash exteriors.

Equipped with a state-of-the-art pump that ensures our exterior weatherproof wall coatings are applied perfectly uniformly, you can rest assured that our pebbledash repair service (unlike that of other pebbledash removal companies in London) will result in a home exterior you can be proud of.

Improving the sustainability of your home

/in , /by

Sustainability can be broken down into two neat, manageable definitions. The first, which expresses ‘sustainability’ in general terms, describes it as the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level. The second, which references the use of ‘sustainability’ in terms of the environment, speaks of ‘sustainability’ as the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance. At All Weather Coating, our services are designed to make your home more sustainable in both senses of the word.

Sustainability is something we should strive for at all times. Whether that means making the most basic, rudimentary change or more grandiose all-encompassing macro alterations, any and all attempts to make the way we live our lives more sustainable should be applauded.

Our most heavily ingrained and antiquated institutions are often the most in need of a dramatic overhaul. The same can be said for the most fundamental unit of human society – the home. As massive consumers of energy and water, our homes are one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome to achieve a more sustainable future. At All Weather Coating, we are determined to help you improve the sustainability of your own home. Our range of services will help restore your property and improve its sustainability going forward.

Restoring your home’s exterior

Simultaneously a restorative and preventative measure, the application of weatherproof coatings is an important step for many homeowners. In terms of restoring a property, a combination of our render repair service and our exterior wall coating service will comprehensively cover any flaws that may have developed over time. Aesthetically, your home’s exterior will look as good as new. Physically too, your home’s exterior will be vastly improved.

Improving the durability of your home’s exterior

Not only will weatherproof coatings address any vulnerabilities that appear in your home’s exterior – aesthetic or otherwise – they will also imbue your walls with the wherewithal to withstand the weather.

Thanks to their composition of a combination of weather and water resistant components, weatherproof coatings are scientifically designed to endure the effects of the weather. At All Weather Coating, we have the specialist equipment and staff to apply wall coatings flawlessly – ensuring your home receives complete coverage.

We are so confident in both our products and our method of application that we are more than happy to guarantee our wall coatings for 25 years – how is that for sustainability?

Improving the sustainability of your home

We have already established that our wall coatings will improve the appearance of your home, as well as its durability in the face of tumultuous weather. But how does this affect the sustainability of your home in the environmental sense of the word? Well, because our wall coatings are over twenty times thicker than conventional paint, they are also a vastly superior insulator, which means they improve your home’s ability to retain heat.

With a better-insulated home, less money and energy has to be committed to maintaining a high temperature inside. By cutting the amount of energy your home consumes, your home is less of a contributor to global warming, helping to create a more sustainable future for all – as well as more financially stable one for yourselves.

To book a site visit today, you can call or email us – or even use this contact form.

Why you should use resin based wall coatings

/in , , /by

Resin-Based Wall Coating London

Walk past almost any property, and you will see the early warning signs of deteriorating exterior walls – blemishes, fractures, and cracks. Over time, these initially innocuous looking crevices can very easily grow into serious structural defects – the kind that will allow your home to be overrun by damp.

Instead of dismissing these inconspicuous flaws as nothing to worry about, they should on the contrary, be a priority of yours to fix. Although this issue is something that needs addressing quickly, it does not mean that a stopgap solution is a satisfactory one. Our resin-based coating service will resolve your exterior wall problem in a matter of days and will keep the reappearance of damage at bay for a minimum of 25 years – guaranteed!  To walk you through this process, and to explain why it is far more effective than the alternatives, we have put together this explanatory blog post.

Why standard masonry paint doesn’t offer enough protection

Unfortunately, typical exterior wall masonry paint simply isn’t hardy enough to protect your exterior walls from damage from the weather for anywhere near an extended period of time. And, given that a home is the longest-term investment you are likely to ever own, it is important that it is properly maintained over time. Composed of little more than the bare essentials required to give your home a decorative finish, standard masonry paint is ill-equipped to protect your home.

Why are resin based wall coatings better than standard masonry paint?

Generally-speaking, wall coatings are many times thicker than typical masonry paint. Because of this increased fortification, they are better adapted to resist buffeting wind and rain. Similarly, because they are designed for longevity as well as ornamental purposes, they are imbued with a number of chemicals that help to dramatically improve their durability. From the infusion of silicon, which enhances wall coatings’ water resistant properties to pliolite technology that speeds up wall coatings’ adhesion to the surface it is binding to. A strong level of adhesion is particularly useful in the volatile British weather.

What difference does resin make to wall coatings?

The presence of resin differentiates resin-based wall coatings from standard wall coatings – but how does this difference separate the two in practical terms?

Resin helps to glue together all of the component parts of an exterior wall coating – leading to a stronger and more durable product. Given that cement, silicone water repellents and minerals (amongst other materials) all go into a wall coating, it is fair to say that the uniting presence of the resin is extremely important.

If you are considering outfitting your home with resin-based wall coatings, there is no better partner to have on your side than All Weather Coating. Our resin-based coating service has been refined and perfected over our many, many years of operation in London and the Home Counties and we would be delighted to help you update your home.  

You can arrange a site visit at your convenience by contacting us by email, phone or through the contact form on our website.