Colouring mortar for rendering

[markharrison]

I will be having my house rendered in the very near future (I'll explain why later) and I have searched but not found colour charts for cement render. I understand that for cement render oxide powder pigments are used and that is what I have been looking for.

I have found colour charts for Granosite and other acrylic renders but I understand that these products are not suitable for my application.

The reason we are rendering the house is that there are a large mixture of finishes (cement brick, painted cement block, chocolate brown brick, red brick...). The previous owner was a moron!

I'm told that the acrylic renders don't play well with some of these base materials but if somebody here knows otherwise I would be interested to hear about it. Also, how long have these finishes been around and any experience on longevity. Not that I intend to be here much longer anyway.

[Tools]

Acrylic renders are suitable for use on brickwork.I don't know why someone would have told you otherwise.You will find that they are easier to apply than cemend render as well.You would first need to render the wall first with cocopops or a drymix render,and then put your top coat over that.You can get the top coat in any paint colour.

Try websites for unitex (www.unitex.com.au),crystaltex,marbletex,and countless others.

Tools

[gsouth]

Had our place rendered in a std cement render, and then had granosite applied over the top of it... substrate was a mix of brick (rendered) and blue board (not cement rendered)... finish looks excellent.

[johnc]

From what I understand acrylic top coats are the only finish to consider for render. There other other products on the market so have a look around, but the coloured toppings hold a lot better than oxides which fade at a faster rate.
It beats painting over the rendered finish and provides a good barrier to wind driven moisture but allows the material to expel any moisture build up from behind.

JohnC

[elphingirl]

We looked into it for our house, and (although we didn't choose to do it in the end) what we found out was that you have to choose specified primer and sealer coat to suit your actual render product - otherwise the results were not guaranteed. Seemed quite expensive overall.
Cheers

[markharrison]

Thanks everyone. You've given me a couple of additional questions to ask. That's a good thing.

Expense while important is not the only consideration. The current mixture of finishes is revolting and considering the median house price in my street is in the $900's (I'm not bragging, it just got expensive since I got here nine years ago) and that I am planning to sell in the near future anyway it makes sense to improve the presentation.

My impression about acrylic renders came from some product information from Dulux that explicitly mentioned cement bricks (therefore presumably also cement blocks) as being an unsuitable substrate. From that, I extrapolated that other products have similar problems. Something I will check with the renderers.

[Tools]

what was the Dulux product you were looking at?

Tools

[markharrison]

It's called "Full Cover Texture".

[Trav]

BY acrylic do people mean that dulux 'render effects' paint stuff? Or a proper render mix that is applied to the wall with a trowell and hawk?

Trav

[wombat47]

Dulux makes Full Cover Texture which is a very thick product designed to cover mortar joins, etc., giving a flat "rendered" surface. It can either be tinted in a range of colours, or applied in its natural white colour and then painted.

Dulex Render Effects is paint with "gritty stuff" in it which gives the appearance of a rendered wall. Applied this to our west facing rear wall some years ago to cover up cracked paint and generally shoddy looking wall. Colour has faded a bit but product shows no sign of breaking down. Looks great in fact.

Wattyl make a product called Granosite which, I guess, is a bit like Full Cover Texture but it's not DIY.

I can't see why Full Cover Texture wouldn't be suitable for cement brick/block. Perhaps you could contact them and check.

[Tools]

Trav,acrylic renders can be either trowel on or roll on depending on the product.Some products can be applied by either method.

Tools

[Larry M]

Mark

I've also been looking at using the Dulux Full Cover Texture to render the front of my place since I saw it used on a TV show. Their website says that it is suitable for concrete and masonry. Concrete bricks are unsuitable because of their very rough texture i.e. it would take huge amounts of product to produce a flat surface. If your surface is more like bricks then it should be fine.

If anyone has used this product I would appreciate any advice. I plan to Do It Myself (DIM doesn't sound as good as DIY does it).

Thanks

Larry

[Tools]

Is full cover Dulux's new roll on product that is supposed to fill all the mortar joints after 2 or 3 coats?

Tools

[markharrison]

The cement bricks in my house are not the highly textured ones. However the chocolate bricks are reasonably high textured though not as much as the examples shown not to use this product on the Dulux website. So maybe this can be used.

I'm planning on not doing this myself. There are just too many jobs to be done and I want to put the house on the market Q1 2006.

[Larry M]

Tools

Yep. From the Dulux website it looks pretty good. Not the sort of thing you'd want to stuff up, so if anyone has used it the benefit of your experience would be appreciated

Larry