Rendering Questions

Rendering costs €35–€90 per m² in Ireland, supplied and applied. A 3-bed semi usually comes to €4,000–€10,000, a detached house €7,000–€16,000 and a bungalow €5,000–€8,000.

For most houses, silicone or monocouche: both carry their colour, so there's no painting. Silicone sheds water and dirt well. Old stone or brick walls built before about 1919 need lime, because cement-based renders trap damp in them.

A one-coat monocouche job is usually 4 to 7 days on site. A base coat with a silicone or acrylic finish takes longer, because the base coat is left about two weeks to cure first. Render shouldn't go on below 5 °C, in rain, or in strong sun and wind.

Usually not. Re-rendering is exempted development when it doesn't change how the house looks so much that it's out of character with the house or its neighbours. A protected structure, an architectural conservation area or a big change of look needs the council's view first.

Not for rendering on its own. If the walls are insulated on the outside and then rendered, SEAI pays €3,000 for an apartment, €3,500 for a mid-terrace, €6,000 for a semi or end of terrace and €8,000 for a detached house, approved before work starts.

Yes, if the dash is sound. The contractor fixes anything loose, puts on a base coat with mesh to level the stones out, then the finish. Where the dash is hollow or coming away, it comes off first.

One rendering contractor who covers your county. Your number isn't sent to a list. They ring you, look at the walls and give you a fixed price. Nothing is booked until you say yes.

Silicone, monocouche and acrylic renders are coloured all the way through, so they're never painted. Sand and cement render is painted with masonry paint, and repainted when the paint fades.

Late spring and summer. Render needs dry days above 5 °C to cure, and rain on a fresh coat washes it out or leaves it patchy. Autumn and winter jobs go ahead in dry spells, with the scaffold sheeted.

Ask for the price in writing with VAT shown, the finish named, and the scaffold, preparation and beads spelled out, so you're comparing like with like.

A brand of factory-made coloured renders, mainly silicone thin coats and one-coat renders. It's not a type of its own.

Your photo and the AI preview go with your request to the one contractor, so they can see the house before they ring. They're not used for anything else or shown anywhere.

One rendering contractor who covers your county. We pass your request to them, and they price and do the work.

Monocouche is a 15mm through-coloured cementitious render best suited to new dense concrete blockwork (new builds and extensions), giving a crisp scraped stone appearance at €45 to €68 per m2. A fibreglass-mesh reinforced polymer basecoat with a 1.5mm silicone topcoat (€58 to €85 per m2) is far more flexible and water-repellent, making it the safer choice for older cracked walls, coastal exposures, or External Wall Insulation wraps.

The reddish-orange and dark green staining seen on Irish gables is Trentepohlia algae and lichen thriving on damp, shaded cement surfaces during mild winters. Hydrophobic silicone renders and modern polymer-modified monocouche mixes shed surface water rapidly so spores cannot root; if algae eventually appears on a shaded north wall after 6 to 8 years, a gentle biocide soft-wash restores the original colour without repainting.

Monocouche must never be applied directly over paint or loose old plaster because it relies on direct suction into bare blockwork. To upgrade an existing painted or dashed house without hacking all the old plaster back to the block, plasterers power-wash the wall, dub out hollow spots, trowel on a high-bond polymer basecoat with full 160 g/m2 fibreglass mesh (plus mechanical fixings if needed), and finish with a 1.5mm silicone topcoat.

Under IS EN 13914-1 and manufacturer warranty rules, external rendering requires substrate and air temperatures to stay at +5C and rising for at least 24 to 48 hours after application, without driving rain or scorching direct sun. From November through early March, crews watch the Met Eireann forecast closely, use winter-grade accelerators for basecoats, and tent elevations on scaffold where necessary.

Galvanised mild-steel corner and bellcast beads should never be used outdoors in Ireland because the thin zinc edge gets abraded by the trowel and quickly rusts, leaving brown streaks down the wall. Heavy-duty UV-stabilised PVCu beads with integral fibreglass mesh wings are the industry standard for monocouche and silicone systems right up to the Atlantic coast, with 316 marine-grade stainless steel reserved for high-impact commercial corners.

No. The SEAI external wall grant (€3,500 to €8,000) only applies when you install a full NSAI Agrément-certified External Wall Insulation (EWI) wrap achieving a post-works wall U-value of 0.27 W/m2K or better (typically 100mm to 120mm of graphite EPS insulation plus mesh basecoat and silicone render). However, because the EWI grant covers the scaffold, insulation, beads, and new silicone render together, many homeowners with failing plaster find the net cost after grant is surprisingly close to a standalone strip-and-rerender.