In article . com,
"Paul" writes:
(With apologies to anyone who had already seen this on
free.uk.diy.home)

My parents are convinced that they need to sign away several thousands
of pounds on a treatment known as Protectacoat for a house which has
solid brick walls with pebbledashed render - this is at least 50-60
years old and now there is some penetrating damp.

By what means has this been shown to be penetrating damp?
If the investigation involved the company intending to do
the work, you're almost certainly being ripped off. They
probably wouldn't diagnose condensation for example, as
they don't know how to fix that (although it is the cause
of most damp problems).

I'm wondering whether it would be better (and possibly cheaper) simply
to have the existing pebbledash render removed and a new one
re-applied?

You need to find the cause of the damp. Pebbledash is
remarkably waterproof (much more so than plain render as
the pepples tend to deflect much of the water off the wall
in the first place, and are not absorbant anyway).
If pebbledash fails, it usually falls off the wall
completely.

--
Andrew Gabriel