How to Fill Cracks in Render

hello and welcome to the first in a three video outdoor decorating series now my cottage was rendered with tyrolean back in the 1970s and it has cracks and when i say cracks i mean a lot of them so in today's video i'm going to show you the process i've gone through to prep and fill those cracks and whilst i've still got a couple of replacement windows to install the next job will be to strip down and refurbish the cast iron gutters and then paint all of the exterior render hopefully before the winter sets in for today crack filling and render repairs i'm going to be trying out three well actually four products and i'll be telling you at the end of the video which one i think works best [Applause] in today's toolkit i've got a few different render products metallux metaset concrete repair resin two prey masonry repair filler two prey fiber krill flexible crack filler and an old bag of tiralene render to extrude the metaset and fiber krill i've got this high strength geared applicator gun from chem fix although it only fits the shorter 310 ml tubes and my longer 380 ml applicator gun would have done the job fine it does need to be geared though rather than a cheap skeleton gun which i'll come on to in a bit and we'll have a look at these top-of-the-range guns that have literally arrived during filming i've also got my 18 volt grinder i started with this jcb i've had it for a few years now and i'll be trying out ryby's new high performance rag 18x in the second half of the video i'm experimenting with two discs this duro diamond universal blade and this abrax mortar brick raking blade and i also had a go with this mortar raking tool i've used my trusty leaf blur for removing all the dust from the ground out joints my trend face mask and goggles and these ear defenders too late to save me from tinnitus but hopefully it won't make it any worse disposable nitrile rubber gloves my trusty small tool wire brushes both manual and for attaching to a drill and grinder as usual details of all today's tools will be in the description below the video now clearly on a victorian cottage like this the ideal situation is you allow the bricks to breathe but unfortunately the previous owners rendered the entire cottage back in the 1970s the render was done well it's still firmly keyed to the brickwork and is over an inch thick in some places so it's impractical for me to want to remove it also i don't know what it would reveal behind and i suspect they did this to hide a multitude of sins but the numerous cracks do need making good to stop rain and other moisture infiltrating behind the render to the brickwork below but why is it cracked as much as this i hear you ask well it's certainly not substance and this house has been standing for over 120 years but if you look closely at the cracks you'll see they're forming under vulnerable points for example sills and guttering where water's been able to get in behind the render it just shows you what a disastrous decision it is to render a house like this but i am where i am and i've got to sort them out now when i moved into this cottage back in 2010 i very quickly as an emergency measure piped a load of exterior sealant over the cracks it was a fiddly thing to do and didn't give the cracks any long-term protection particularly given that i didn't grind them out first so the first step was to grind out the cracks why because you need to do this to give the filler something tangible to key onto or into without this the crack is just too small and you end up smearing all the filler over the surface like i did originally i have this bosch grinder i bought about 10 years ago but being 230 volts it was inconvenient to use outside given it needed a long extension lead so i reached for this grind i was sent by jcb a few years ago but which i've rarely used i did use the bosch later on in the process but found it too powerful for grinding out the cracks so an 18 volt grinder is perfect for this type of job for the grinding discs themselves in the past i've used standard stone cutting discs but find they wear out too quickly so a year or so ago i bought this duro disc which cuts general construction materials and also metal it's fantastic carries much less risk of snapping and has shown little wear given how much i've used it there was a lot of grinding to do with around 16 meters of cracks across the render for the majority of it i used the duro diamond disc although i did try a small section with the abrax brick raking blade which i found ground too wide a gap than necessary in the wall and actually didn't penetrate deep enough into the crack but the render is easy to grind and it's not a difficult process it's just messy and i was glad to have my 18 volt leaf blower that you might have seen in my other videos to remove all the dust from the ground out cracks and surrounding areas i thought i'd do a quick mini review of this ryb grinder from their hp range because this literally arrived in the middle of this job ryobi haven't paid me anything to mention this tool i've been using library tools as a lot of you will know since the start of this channel and they recently started sending me the odd thing to mention in my videos i'm not great on reviews i prefer to mention tools in the context of jobs i'm doing which is why i'm sandwiching this in now now i mentioned the power of the bosch earlier at 9 200 revolutions per minute the ryebee sits in between the bosch and the jcb more on that in a minute they've done away with the disc spanner in favor of a toolless fixed tech nut which i had to use a spanner to initially loosen personally i prefer the spanner and i think the button you press to lock the grinder wheel in place to loosen the nut needs some work as i think i'm reasonably strong but it took so much effort to get this to engage oh and ryubi have remodeled their batteries which i think is a pity as i really liked the rubber base of the old battery when you're putting tools down on workbenches and such like those are my gripes over though i think the one-handed trigger is genius if perhaps a bit more flimsy than your typical trigger switch let's hope i don't drop it on something there's a neat spring switch for swiveling the guard this additional guard piece and i love the power if the bosch was too powerful then the jcb was perhaps a bit underpowered and this youb sits right in the middle and really hits the sweet spot for jobs like this i really enjoyed grinding out the cracks with this grinder and cost wise i think it compares pretty favorably with the competition review over and what about this mortar raking tool well i had high hopes for this tool for this tricky space in between the gutter and the wall that i couldn't get the grinder into but unfortunately it just didn't penetrate the tirulene in any way near as well as the grinder disc although it's fantastic for raking water funny that i'm going to strip the wall-based plants off which were another ill-conceived addition in the 1970s having installed this soak away with a land drain in it when i moved into the cottage to give the walls a crucial opportunity to breathe at least along this point and when i do that i will use this tool quite a lot to rake out the mortar before re-pointing the brickwork and so we're on to filling the cracks i thought i'd show you three different processes here so that you can assess the merits of each and decide which one is best for your job and the first involves this metalux metaset two-part styrene-free polyester resin from chemfix now i first used a metallux product it was actually a two-part wood filler in a video five years ago that i bought from johnston's and chem fix got in touch with me after that video and i've since used their excellent erc-10 and ehb 60 epoxy repair systems to rebuild a dormer window and do some furniture repairs when i told them about all these cracks they sent me several tubes of this metaset free of charge but they haven't paid me anything to mention them in this video now the filler comes in two parts which are mixed in this nozzle when you extrude it out of the tube and it's a good idea to squeeze out a short section before you start using it to ensure an even flow of resin and activator are extruded as the first few centimeters extruded from a new tube might not be completely mixed and therefore set properly but from that point on it's a joy to use what struck me about this setup is just how far into the crack you can penetrate the filler how you tool the surface is up to you but i took to wearing nitrile gloves they're thin and so you can be really precise as you work pressing the filler firmly against the ground edges at surface level to ensure a complete comprehensively filled crack what's great about using this resin with mortar is that the resin has a sandy texture which i really like for mortar filling jobs the sandy texture gives it strength and viscosity so that it doesn't slump when you tool it even when you're filling really wide spaces like this and also it doesn't shrink one bit when it's set and i use it to fill the void behind the gutter downpipe where water has historically got in to create these lateral cracks the gutter was also working loose on its fixing pins but is now rock solid more on the gutter refurb in my next vid and i was even able to fill and tool this tricky vertical crack with ease now i mentioned applicator guns at the start not all applicator guns are created equal and for fillers like this you really need a geared gun the cheap skeleton guns you pick up are typically not geared which is fine for jobs like siliconing but it's a lot harder on your hands if you're extruding thick fillers and geared guns like this give a much more comfortable controlled extrusion if you're interested this particular gun has a 12 to 1 gearing ratio and a six millimeter movement between pools it was supplied to me by chem fix for use with this sealant but only takes 310 ml tubes so if it was me buying one of these guns for the first time i'd want bit more of a heavy duty all-rounder like this grey gun that i bought from travis perkins down in cornwall many moons ago it takes 380 millimeter tubes and also has a gearing mechanism i'll post links to the different guns in the description below this video and included in that will be these two top-of-the-range tajima guns thanks to sealants online for sending them to me with this tashima red for super high pressure applications and a ratio of 26 to 1 and the tajima blue being dual powered you can toggle between 8 to 1 and 16 to 1 ratio at the flick of a switch frustrating they only take 310 ml cartridges but can be modified to fit a 380 mil cartridge cage again they haven't paid me to mention these guns in this video now one of the things i've always worried about with these very clever nozzles is running out of nozzle mid job because of course when the resin has set inside the nozzle that's it you have to bin it i can see this be an issue with jobs where you're hoping to come back and reuse the ceiling on four or five different occasions but on this job it really hasn't been a problem each tube of resin as you've seen comes with two spare nozzles and if you plan the job like i have and get all your cracks ready to be filled in one go you really haven't got a problem i've used up nearly four tubes of resin on this job and quite often when one tube of resin finished i ended up taking off the nozzle and putting it onto the next with the end result that i've only used three of these nozzles this stuff does go off pretty quickly in about sort of five to ten minutes but if you keep a regular flow of resin going through the nozzle you won't experience any problems with the resin setting in the nozzle while you're trying to use it so that's all the cracks successfully filled with the meta set but when you've got heavily textured surface like i have with this tyra lane render you've got the next problem of trying to work out how to stop these cracks looking too obvious when we come to painting and how we do that is really a question of improvisation there's a few techniques you can try i've experimented in the past with a wire brush like this but the meta set is simply too hard it just doesn't make a proper impact into it although something like this is good for removing dead ivy and other things like that from the render now i've filled some cracks with this meta set just over a year ago you can see on screen now how they look like when they've been painted not bad but a bit too smooth at the edges and therefore quite obvious for that i use this wire brush disc attachment for my grinder you can see it's a lot more effective at grinding off the stray bits of metaset but i've also been experimenting today with our mortar raking tool and whilst this is a bit more painstaking i think this produces the best results so i'll be using this on the majority of these cracks and for the results of this raking tool check in in a few weeks time for my render painting video and so we're on to the two prey masonry repair filler which i picked up recently in my johnston's decorator center when i swung by to pick up the two prey fibre krill i've got to say i didn't really know anything about this stuff and i didn't have high hopes for it but the performance of this filler has surpassed my expectations it comes in a convenient 1.5 kilogram box as i often do i mixed it in an old food container using my trusty small tool you're always meant to pour the filler into water as i'm doing here but this way you can end up with more filler than you need as in fact i've done here so if you want more control of the quantities for small amounts like this you can reverse the process and pour the filler into a tub and just add water to it this is definitely a slower and messier process than using the metaset which you can simply pipe into the gap but with a combination of my small tool sponge and toothbrush i've been able to create a pretty good mottled texture similar to the surface of the tiraelian render it's set to rock hard consistency hasn't slumped or shrunk and i'm going to predict that this gives us the most invisible repair of the three main fillers i'm using today once painted next up is this two prey flexible crack filler that i originally saw in john stones a few years ago in its old packaging i was intrigued by this filler which markets itself as something that's enriched with fibers moves with a substrate and will not crack as you'd expect it penetrates deep into the crack but when it comes to hand tooling it to the sides of the crack it felt like a typical decorator's cork which isn't terribly satisfying for an external product and what about when it's set well the trade-off for that flexibility is that it doesn't set hard and in fact has shrunk into the crack a reasonable amount bottom line i'm simply not impressed with this filler and whilst they make a big claim as to its flexibility this section that i extruded to test its flexibility snapped when i bent it i'll wait and see what it looks like when painted just for interest sake but to be honest with you i'll probably end up grinding it out and replacing it with a metaset or perhaps the repair filler which brings us on to the final section in this video having a bit of fun with tyrioli and render itself now this is typically not a stocking builder's merchants but i ordered it a couple of years ago from travis perkins to cover a reasonably large section of re-rendered brickwork on the back of the house which unfortunately i haven't got around to tackling yet and i was going to use this heavy duty flicker machine to apply it as the name suggests this flicks the tooling render onto the outside wall and i'm sorry to disappoint you but i won't be using it today but i have used the render to repair a small section where the tyranny and render broke away by the kitchen door and the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed the shoddy job that some roofers did with the render after fixing a couple of lead soakers when i got them in back in 2012. and with this deep crack also to fill i thought it'd be a good opportunity to use up some of that old bag mixing it into water as before you'll notice the sandy texture of this filler which makes it easy to work but being so many years out of date was a concern now tourillion isn't designed to be laid on too thick typically in two coats but as a finale to this part of the project i thought i'd just lay on in one coat anyway not having high hopes for it given how old the bag of render is i find a plasters hawk and gauging trail one of the most useful tools when rendering with the plastering trowel on hand to give the surface a consistent flat edge once i was happy with the render i used a combination of bristle and wire brush and toothbrush to give it some sort of textured finish and actually in spite of its age and laying it on in just one coat it hasn't done too badly after applying a watered-down coat of pva to guarantee a dust-free surface and to assist with adhesion i'll then turn my attention to the crack around the back of the house which i provide support for with this improvised bit of wood whilst it's set and actually in spite of its age and laying it on in just one coat it hasn't done too badly setting to a rock hard finish so that's it for today another video that should have been really simple and has taken far too long to put together but i hope at least you've found it useful and gleaned some interesting things from it for your project what conclusions can i draw from today's project well the standout winner for me was the meta set it's just so easy to extrude so easy to use and it's just a fantastic product close behind i've been really impressed with the two prey masonry repair filler i think you could use these almost in tandem really this for wide cracks like this one and then the meta set for your sort of ground out cracks like i've been doing today my advice to you would be do not touch this with a barge pole unless you have got render that is subject to movement i've just been really disappointed with this sorry to pray don't forget details of all the tools i've used today will be in the description below the video which you can access on your smartphone by clicking on the little arrow and on your pc by clicking on the show more button we're in a weird september heat wave right now so i'm going to crack on with those gutters in the hope that i can get them and the render painted before the winter sets in so see you soon and once again massive thanks for watching oh and if you're new to my channel it would mean so much to me to have you subscribe you could do that by clicking on the link here and don't forget to click the bell notification icon so you get notified of all my future uploads see you soon

Channel: Charlie DIYte

Views: 257,180

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Id: rAYEkPgpUKk

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021