Exterior Spray Painting in Oakenshaw

What the age of the housing means for the walls

Of the 3,140 properties the Valuation Office Agency records around Oakenshaw centre, 28.3% pre-date 1919 (above the 21% average), so solid-walled stone or brick houses that must be able to breathe sit alongside later cavity-wall housing that can take a wider range of coatings, and we establish which you have before recommending a system. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, pre-1919 housing averages 26.0%, 2.3 points lower than here, so solid walls that need breathable coatings are more of a feature here than elsewhere in the county.

A further 31.9% were built between 1919 and 1972 (5.1% between the wars and 26.8% from 1945 to 1972, below the 42% average for that period), and postwar estates of the 1950s and 1960s often mixed brick with rendered or dashed panels; a few system-built houses of that time have concrete panels that need a survey before any coating. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, 1919 to 1972 housing averages 39.1%, 7.2 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 23.2% 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 and semi-detached houses together make up 61.1% of homes here (39.3% semi-detached, 21.8% detached), and a semi usually has three elevations to spray: front, side and rear. The rest of the stock includes 8.3% flats. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, the detached share averages 23.8%, 2.0 points higher than here, so most jobs here involve fewer elevations than in the rest of the county.

Terraced homes are 30.6% of the total (above the 27% average), and on a mid-terrace we normally spray the front and rear only, with an end terrace adding its gable. We agree a clean finishing line where your wall meets the neighbour's, sheet adjoining walls, windows and cars against overspray, and check rear access at the survey because it often decides the programme.

Owners, landlords and timing

Owner-occupiers make up 74.6%, 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, 19.2% rent privately and 6.1% rent from a council or housing association. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, owner-occupation averages 70.5%, 4.1 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 Oakenshaw compares with nearby towns

The nearest towns have less pre-1919 housing (25.7% in Wyke, 16.9% in Birkenshaw and 25.6% in Cleckheaton), so old solid walls are a bigger part of the work in Oakenshaw than around it. The biggest contrast in house type is with Wyke, where only 15.0% of homes are detached, so more jobs in Oakenshaw involve four elevations and the access equipment that goes with them. Renting also differs: 25.3% of households here rent, against 35.0% in Wyke, 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 41.2% in Cleckheaton to 49.9% in Wyke, and Oakenshaw sits below that range. Building since 2000 is at a similar level nearby, with Birkenshaw highest of the three at 17.8%. Owner-occupation is higher here than in Wyke, where 64.7% of households own their home, so fewer of the exterior decisions in Oakenshaw rest with landlords.

What the figures suggest about a quote

The most common home around Oakenshaw centre is a semi-detached house: roughly 1,180 of the 3,014 households live in semi-detached houses. Our starting figure of around £1,200 is for a front elevation, so on a typical semi the side and rear, plus any garage or render repairs, are what the survey adds. Next come terraced houses, roughly 920 households, where the front and rear are usually the whole job. The largest group of properties was built before 1919 (the 63rd highest share for that period of the 203 towns we cover), so the survey also decides whether a wall should be coated at all, and with what.