I live in a 1905 terraced house. We have a damp issue as water is getting in behind the pebbledashed render on the front of the house.

For me, this is the perfect excuse to get rid of the hideous render and go back to brick

I appreciate that the render can potentially mess up the bricks. If they are then painted, would this resolve any issues or are the problems usually more serious than that?

Also, does anybody know any good companies who can remove the render? I live in SW London

cheers

erm... I seem to remember previous Threads about removing pebbledash. I think the conclusion was that you are pretty much stuck with it, but can paint over the vile stuff to seal out the damp that it tends to breed.

Ary.

You should not seal render as it makes damp worse, not allowing moisture out.You can hack off but will probably need to be rendered again if brickwork is poor, you can then paint the render if you wish, or have it pebble dashed.

Is the render original to the house or was it added later? If it is original then it is probably best to deal with the areas that are causing the damp problem but leave the pebbledashing in situ. If it was a later 'improvement' (sic) then you should get advice about removing it and perhaps work on an unobtrusive test area. I have a cottage built in 1870 and when I bought it I wondered why my brickwork was brighter than the neighbouring houses. I thought someone had chemically cleaned it in the past and I wasn't impressed, but it turned out that the front had been rendered at one time and a previous owner got rid of it - very successfully and leaving no damage to the brickwork or pointing that I (or my surveyor) could see.