Advantages Of Lime Plastering

There are many advantages to using Lime Plaster but the most impressive are its breathability and flexibility making it very useful for conservation and older buildings.

Breathable

Lime plaster will allow moisture to easily pass through whereas cement will trap and prevent moisture from escaping, leading to a greater problem - gradually building and then ultimately forcing the damp to come out elsewhere.

Flexible

Whilst cement based plasters and renders are strong in compressive strength they lack greatly in flexibility. Any movement can easily result in the very strong cement based plaster cracking and if used externally will allow the ingress of water and damp. Then the damp will be trapped behind a non breathable render. 

So while lime is not as hard, it's more flexible, so suited for use in an older buildings. 

In this room the ceiling was plasterboarded and skimmed using normal plaster. All the walls were plastered using Traditional Lime Render and Lime Finish Plaster.

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Paving Tiles And Rendered & Painted Wall

Here's another of one of my favourite projects: The existing steps had to be removed and replaced with a paved entrance leading to a doorway.

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House Rendered & Painted

The back wall of this house in Margate, Kent was badly in need of repair. The solution: to render the wall (using a mixture of sand and cement & lime) to a smooth finish, then 2 coats of masonary paint to weatherproof it.

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Restoring An Old Wall Using Traditional Lime Render Plaster & Lime Finish Plaster

Lime render is a surface coating applied to protect the walls of a building, whether that is made of stone, brick or straw bale. It is softer and more flexible than cement and allows the walls to 'breathe'. This means moisture evaporates from the walls, preventing water from being trapped inside the building. All pre-twentieth century buildings were built using breathable materials.

Modern materials do not work in the same way and where cement render has been used in older properties this will often crack, letting water into the building which causes damp problems. Once the water is trapped inside the property it cannot get out and these damp conditions can result in the timbers rotting, including beam ends, rafter ends, joist ends and lintels.

At Plastering 4u we regularly carry out lime rendering, on all kinds of background and conditions, and we are experienced in handling the structural repairs required for certain older buildings.

In this example below, the walls around the fireplace had been repaired using cement render resulting in damp problems. All the damaged areas were removed, then 2 coats of Lime Render were applied. To give a super smooth finish we then applied a Lime Finish Plaster.

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