Orange streaking, a flat green film, or years of road grime. From the footpath they all read as a dirty house, and each of the three needs something different done to it. Here is how to tell which you have without getting a ladder out.
Heavy commuter traffic on the Dublin–Wexford route lays road film across render right through the town, and the damp underneath it does the rest. Green algae takes the shaded elevations first, red algae shows up as orange streaking on damp walls, and years of the two together leave a general darkening that reads as grime.
The flat green film that appears first, nearly always on the elevation that dries slowest. It has no thickness to it at all — that is how you tell it from anything else — and it is the most straightforward of the three to clear. If it is left to build it holds enough damp on the wall for heavier growth to follow, so catching it early keeps the job small.
The orange-red streaking that gets mistaken for rust more than anything else we deal with. It is Trentepohlia, a red algae carrying an orange pigment, and it favours damp elevations rather than anywhere near metal. It responds very well to treatment, which is the part people are relieved to hear after hunting for a leak that was never there.
Not one organism but the residue of several, layered up over years with road dust through it. On the busier routes through town this is often most of what you can see, and it is why a wall can look far worse than its actual condition. It lifts well, and the change on a stained elevation is the most dramatic thing we do.
Name it wrong and you buy the wrong treatment. It is worth two minutes.
A picture of the worst elevation does most of it. Colour, whether it has any thickness, how far it has spread and which side of the house started. Those four between them settle nearly every case without anybody having to come out to you.
The answer decides the approach. A flat film clears quickly under treatment. Red algae wants a proper dwell. Where it turns out to be mostly road film, that is a rinse rather than a treatment and it is priced accordingly.
You get told plainly what you have and what will shift it. If the honest answer is that it can wait another year, that is the answer you get, and you are further ahead for having asked.
A one-minute check and a short read, both free.
What Trentepohlia actually is, why it turns up on damp render, why it is so consistently taken for rust, and what clears it properly.
The Render Check runs through what to look for from the footpath in about a minute. Plenty of people who use it are told their walls have another year in them, which is money not spent.
We cover Gorey along with Clonattin, Ramstown and Creagh, from the streets either side of the main route out to the estates on the edge of the town.
Whatever is on the render is usually on the roof and in the gutters as well. It is one damp problem wearing three faces.
What people ask once they have stood back and had a proper look.
Almost certainly Trentepohlia — a red algae, and one of the most misidentified things on Irish houses. It is regularly taken for rust running off something metal, or for a stain in the render itself. It is neither. It is alive, which is precisely why a treatment clears it and scrubbing does not.
Depth. Moss has thickness — you could lift a piece with a finger — and it goes for the bottom courses and the shaded base. Algae is a flat film with no thickness at all, green or orange depending on which it is.
You can, and on a big house it is often the sensible call. We will tell you honestly which elevations actually need it — treating one side and leaving three is a perfectly reasonable job.
They rarely need to be. A phone picture from the ground in ordinary daylight tells us the finish, the extent and roughly the area. If we need another angle we will just ask for it.
What each organism is, what it does to render and what shifts it. All of that lives on the main softwashing page rather than here.
One photograph from the footpath is more use to us than any description, and quicker for you.
Phone: 089-949-1525
WhatsApp: Send a couple of photos
Email: info@eireshine.ie
Send it through and you will get the name of it, along with a straight view on whether it is far enough along to be worth treating. Often it is not, and that is good news.
A phone photo is fine. It does not need to be a good one.
