Exterior Spray Painting in Ampleforth

What the age of the housing means for the walls

Of the 750 properties the Valuation Office Agency records around Ampleforth centre, 37.3% were built before 1919, well above the 21% average, and houses of that age normally have solid stone or brick walls with no cavity that stay healthy by drying outwards. On them we use only breathable masonry coatings, and where sound stone has never been painted we will often suggest leaving it that way. Across the other 50 North Yorkshire towns we cover, pre-1919 housing averages 29.9%, 7.4 points lower than here, so solid walls that need breathable coatings are more of a feature here than elsewhere in the county.

The interwar and postwar decades account for just 25.4% of homes here, against 42% on average, so heavy pebbledash and roughcast are less common than in many Yorkshire towns. Across the other 50 North Yorkshire towns we cover, 1919 to 1972 housing averages 28.1%, 2.7 points higher than here, so dashed render is likely to be less of the work here than in neighbouring parts of the county.

Homes built from 1973 to 1999 make up 22.7% of properties here (above the 19% average), and houses of that era are mostly brick-faced, so the exterior work on them is usually rendered panels, timber cladding and roofline boards, where original timber or early uPVC soffits and fascias are often weathered, yellowed or chalky by now.

House type, access and what gets sprayed

Detached homes make up 53.4%, well above the 20% average for the towns we cover, and a detached house usually means four elevations, gable ends at height and a tower or scaffold for the upper walls. The rest of the stock includes 31.9% semi-detached and 1.1% flats. Across the other 50 North Yorkshire towns we cover, the detached share averages 36.8%, 16.6 points lower than here, so a job here is more likely to involve four elevations and work at gable height than in the rest of the county.

Terraces are relatively rare here at 13.6% of homes, so most jobs involve at least one exposed side elevation as well as the front and back.

Owners, landlords and timing

Owner-occupiers make up 72.2%, above the 63% average for the towns we cover, so most exterior jobs here are long-term decisions about the house, which is why we would rather spend an extra day on render repairs than skip them. Of the other households, 17.8% rent privately and 9.8% rent from a council or housing association. Across the other 50 North Yorkshire towns we cover, owner-occupation averages 69.0%, 3.2 points lower than here, so decisions about the outside of the house rest with owners more often than in the rest of the county.

How Ampleforth compares with nearby towns

The nearest towns have less pre-1919 housing (33.9% in Helmsley, 12.7% in Easingwold and 41.9% in Slingsby), so old solid walls are a bigger part of the work in Ampleforth than around it. The biggest contrast in house type is with Easingwold, where only 40.5% of homes are detached, so more jobs in Ampleforth involve four elevations and the access equipment that goes with them. Renting also differs: 27.6% of households here rent, against 39.5% in Helmsley, and on a rented home the colour of the outside walls is normally the landlord's decision.

For housing built from 1919 to 1972, the main pebbledash and roughcast era, the three range from 18.4% in Easingwold to 22.6% in Helmsley, and Ampleforth sits above that range. Easingwold has the most recent building of the three, with 35.8% of homes dating from 2000 onwards, so through-coloured renders that may only need cleaning are more common there than in Ampleforth. Owner-occupation is higher here than in Helmsley, where 58.3% of households own their home, so fewer of the exterior decisions in Ampleforth rest with landlords.

What the figures suggest about a quote

The most common home around Ampleforth centre is a detached house: roughly 370 of the 700 households live in detached houses. Because elevations, gable heights and access vary so much from one detached house to the next, these are priced from the survey rather than from the front-elevation starting figure of around £1,200. Next come semi-detached houses, roughly 220 households, where the side elevation is usually the main addition to the front. The largest group of properties was built before 1919, so the survey also decides whether a wall should be coated at all, and with what.

With this much pre-1919 housing, listed buildings and conservation areas are more likely here than in most of the towns we cover, so if yours may be one, check with North Yorkshire Council before booking any change of colour or painting of bare masonry.