Poorly steps - Re rendering of concrete steps

[treacle]

Hi great site (if only I could understand half of it!!)

I am hoping you can give me some advice about rendering badly damaged steps. I live in a 1st floor mainsonette which is accessed by a flight of approximately 15 external steps. The steps run between the side of the house and a solid brick wall so are fully contained but not under cover, exposed to the elements. Over time the steps have started to crack and fall apart. They are currently covered in a stoney/gravely type render. Each step is approximately 1 metre long, 30 cm deep and 15 cm in height. They are made up of normal bricks on their side cemented together with the render as mentioned above on the tread and risers, which is about 1/2 cm thick. Some of the bricks within the steps are also now starting to crumble.

A friend of mine has offered to repair the steps for me and has previously repaired two of them (which are still fine) a few years ago whereby the front of the step had shuttering put up and he then just filled with cement mix. He does not want to particularly do this with all the other steps so I was wondering if you could point us in the right direction as to what is the best way to carry out the repairs. Is it better to use shuttering and fill with cement or is there a way to render with a trowel in order to prevent the need for shuttering. And if this is an option do the surfaces of the bricks need to be treated with something in order to make the render stick.
Also can you advise me what would be the best render to use.

Hope all this makes sense.

All advice will be greately received.

Many thanks

[Tony McC]

The steps need to be assessed before deciding what would be the best way to proceed. If the current render is in a parlous condition, there's no sense in daubing further render over it, but if it's merely a case of shrinkage cracks, then a simple render would be the cheapest option.

Ask a local builder or two to take a look.