The renderers have been in for a week now and have made some terrific progress. It looks like the job might finish sooner than the three weeks that they allowed. According to the other tradies on the site they are the cleanest renderers they have ever seen. Normally these are render splashes everywhere, but on our job not one splash yet.

They have started on the upper level which has the Hebel Powerpanel as the cladding. There is a special preparation for the Hebel called Acratex Hebel Skimcoat . This is a mortar looking compound with some fibrous additive. I guess that the Hebel must have a different expansion and contraction profile than normal blockwork. This would account for the fibres, they must help prevent cracking of the render.

In the first week the rendering team did all of the Acratex Hebel Skimcoating and priming. They started to apply the Acratex Tuscony fine texture coat to the tricky bits and will spend next week doing the application of the texture coat on the main surfaces upstairs. The final Acrashield protection coat will be applied by the painter as it is a roll on application rather than trowel on.

Towards the end of next week the team should be onto the lower level which means we can ditch the scaffolding that has cost the equivalent of the GDP of a small European country.

Check out more photos in the gallery under week 38. Or just click here.