Exterior cleaning in Ashmore

Old roof coverings. There are twenty six entries on the national list in and around this village, and plenty of unlisted buildings of a similar age beside them. Where a roof is hand made clay tile or stone slate, no pressure goes near it at any setting.

Old clay is porous and softer than it looks, and a lance drives water under the lap, lifts tiles off their nibs and takes the weathered face off in strips. Moss is lifted off dry by hand and by scrape, the ridge is checked, never scrubbed, because the mortar under it is usually lime and already tired, and treatment is used sparingly. Lichen on old clay is a different question. It is slow, largely harmless and part of how the roof looks, so we will say when a roof clean is simply not worth buying.

Flint, soft brick and lime mortar. Where a wall is flint panels and lime rather than brickwork and cement, the joint is softer than the stone either side of it. Force does not clean that surface, it excavates it: mortar comes out of the joints, water is driven into the wall behind, and the damage does not show until the following winter. That work is a low pressure rinse and a brush, sometimes a treatment and nothing else. Limewashed and lime rendered elevations are the same argument, since the coating is meant to weather and wash off slowly.

Not everything in Ashmore is old. The later houses round the village carry concrete tile, pebbledash and painted masonry, and they get the ordinary handling: moss off dry, biocide on to kill the spore, and a soft wash at low pressure on the walls.

The gutters in Ashmore, many of them still cast iron, fill with leaf and seed off the trees as much as with moss, and clearing them is a separate job worth doing before any wall is washed. Old stone flags delaminate under force, so they get low pressure and a treatment for the black spot lichen, while block paving on the newer drives takes a wash and fresh kiln dried sand back into the joints. Anything shaded and sloping is done first, because that is where somebody actually slips.

Age decides the price more than area does. A cottage with a hedge between the road and the wall, a farmhouse with a long low roof and no level ground for a tower, and a newer house you can pole from the drive are three different jobs before any water moves.

The surface. Soft brick, flint and lime need a low pressure or soft wash and more time. Modern block paving and concrete tiles can take more.

The growth. Heavy moss on a north facing roof is scraped off by hand, then treated with biocide, which keeps working for weeks. Lichen on stone is slow to go and should not be scrubbed off hard.

Access. Reach poles do part of it, the rest wants a tower, and the work at height rules decide which. Soft or sloping ground makes a tower slower to set up safely.

Water and run-off. A long hose run, and collecting the washings away from a drain, both add time to the job.

Ask what is treated and what is only rinsed, what pressure is used on soft brick or flint, whether a second visit is included, and where the run-off goes.

We clean in Ashmore and the Cranborne Chase villages, out through Sixpenny Handley towards Shaftesbury and down to Blandford, 19.7 miles out from our Boscombe base, where Dorset Council is the authority.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, is the company, and its owner, Thomas Hannen, comes up to look at the surfaces and price them. On Checkatrade, a verified customer has rated the work 10 out of 10. There is no charge for coming out, and none for the written, itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Ashmore, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Ashmore need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.