Exterior cleaning in Bashley
Roof moss, green render, blocked gutters, slippery paving and blackened timber around Bashley and BH25. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A pressure wash that is right for your block paving will wreck the timber cladding on the stable and the concrete tiles on the roof. Bashley is house, garage, drive and a good deal of outbuilding, and those four want four different methods, so we price each surface separately or we are guessing.
The calls come in three shapes. A roof that has gone green on the shaded pitch, with moss dropping into the gutter and the gutter now running over the fascia. A drive and a patio that have turned slippery under the trees. Or an outbuilding, a stable block or a run of fencing and cladding that has gone black and is starting to look neglected in a way the house does not.
What happens next is the same each time. The site visit is free and it covers the whole plot rather than the elevation you rang about, because on properties this size the roof, the yard and the outbuildings usually need doing on different cycles. Doubtful surfaces get a test area before we quote them. Then the written itemised quote sets out the method against each surface, what gets pressure, what gets a soft wash, what gets a treatment and time, and what we would leave well alone.
The work
House, drive, stable and fence: four surfaces, four methods
The nineties roofs. Nearly 40% of Bashley was built between 1983 and 2008, with the peak in the 1990s, so a lot of the covering is concrete interlocking tile in good condition carrying moss it does not deserve. A roof clean on that tile is a dry scrape and a soft wash, never a jet wash: the colour is a thin cement face, and once it is stripped the tile takes up water and greens over faster than it did before. We lift the moss out of the lap by hand, keep the ridge out of it because the bedding mortar is the part that suffers, then put a biocide down so the spore dies rather than being knocked off to grow back next winter. At 40.3% bungalows, a good share of that work happens from ground level.
Stables, outbuildings and timber. This is the part of a Bashley property a house cleaner tends to skip. Stable blocks, field shelters, workshops, timber cladding, close board fencing and post and rail all go black with algae and lichen long before they rot. Softwood is the surface people damage most often: pressure raises the grain, tears the fibres and leaves the timber wetter and rougher than it was, so cladding and fencing get a low pressure wash and a treatment instead. Profiled sheet on older outbuildings we look at before we touch, because on buildings of a certain age that sheet can be cement based and is then not a cleaning job at all.
Smooth render and thin coat systems on the newer houses, older sand and cement and pebbledash on the cottages, plain brickwork between them. All of it is a soft wash at low pressure through a wide nozzle. On old render the damage from a lance shows up as lost mortar and a wet wall the following winter rather than on the day, which is why people only find out afterwards.
Forest edge planting means leaf, needle and seed on top of the moss, so gutter clearing here is a twice a year job. We clear by hand and by vacuum, flush every run to the outlet and follow each downpipe to the gully. On a long low building the valley between two ranges is where debris arrives first and where the first leak shows. Block paving, concrete, slabs and the gravel and hoggin yards that go with a paddock all want different handling, and block paving is re-sanded with fresh kiln dried sand so the joints hold.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Bashley sits inside the New Forest National Park, so the National Park Authority is the planning authority for this address rather than the district council, and the boundary runs close enough that it is worth putting your own address into the National Park Authority's interactive property map once. For cleaning it changes nothing: washing a surface and leaving it as it was is maintenance. It changes plenty for what people are often sold alongside a clean. Painting render a different colour, or putting a coloured coating on a roof, alters appearance in a landscape where appearance is the point of the designation, and permitted development is drawn more tightly inside the Park.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
Four surfaces on one property, four methods, four rates of progress, which is why there is no single figure. A nineties detached with block paving to stand the van on and a tap by the back door, a bungalow you can pole from the lawn, and a smallholding where the stable block is the far side of a paddock and no hose reaches it are three different jobs. The work at height rules decide whether a pole or a tower does the high work. Ask what treatment is included rather than only a rinse.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. Most of what we do around Bashley has a date on it, a sale, a let changing over or somebody coming to look at the yard, so give us the day rather than the week. We will say honestly whether the whole property or only part of it can be finished properly by then. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Inside the National Park, it is the coating that needs thought, not the clean
The thing worth understanding about a Bashley address is that the National Park Authority, not the district council, decides what may change about the outside of your property, and its interest is in how buildings sit in the landscape. Cleaning does not engage any of that. Taking moss off a roof, algae off render or lichen off a fence leaves the building looking like itself, only tidier, and nobody needs to be asked. Where people get caught out is the upsell that so often follows a clean.
A coloured roof coating, a masonry paint in a shade that was not there before, or a bright sealer on a drive all change how a building reads from a lane or a field, and in a designated landscape that is a different conversation entirely. The Authority's heritage and conservation guidance is the place to start on anything older or more prominent.
Our own view, for what it is worth on any address rather than just this one, is that roof coatings are rarely worth the money. They are sprayed onto tiles that have just been cleaned, they look excellent for a few years, and they make the eventual repair harder because a coated tile cannot be matched or reused.
If somebody quotes you a clean and a coating in the same breath, ask what happens when a tile slips. On a property with paddock fencing, stables and a yard, the same money spent on gutter clearing, a proper treatment and a wash on the timber will do a great deal more for how the place looks from the lane.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Bashley, Wootton and the lanes towards Sway and Bransgore, and the rest of BH25 through New Milton, with the New Forest National Park Authority as the planning authority for this address. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Bashley questions we get asked
Is the National Park involved if I only want it washed?
Not for a wash. Bashley sits inside the New Forest National Park, so the Authority is the planning body here rather than the district, but cleaning does not alter the appearance of a building in the way that consent exists to control. If the conversation moves on to coating a roof or recolouring render, that is the point where it becomes their business and worth a call before anything is ordered.
The house is 1990s. Is the roof due already?
Often it is. Building in Bashley peaked in the 1990s, and a concrete interlocking tile of that age has lost enough of its surface for moss to key into it properly. That is what the tile does rather than a fault in it. Cleaning it back and treating it slows the next round down, whereas sealing it does not, and coatings are not something we offer on any roof.
Do you take the leaf litter away or bag it up?
We take it with us. Around Bashley the gutters and valleys carry pine needle and heath litter more than they carry moss, and one season of that turns into a wet mat pressed against the fascia. It goes into bags and onto the van rather than into a garden bin or a heap behind an outbuilding. The outlets and downpipes get flushed through once the runs are empty.
Can outbuildings and fencing be done on the same visit?
If we know before the quote, because it changes the time on site rather than the method used. Timber wants a gentler wash than a tiled roof, and a fence that has already gone soft will shed its surface if it is lanced. On the larger Bashley plots the outbuildings are often the dirtiest thing there and the easiest to reach, so they get done while the roof treatment works.
Is a mossy roof actually doing any harm?
It does two things. Wet moss adds weight and holds water against the tile, and lumps of it break away and block the outlet, which sends water down the wall instead of into the drain. On the exposed south west face around Bashley the wind then lifts the loosened growth and drops it into a valley. Neither ruins a roof by itself, but together they are what soaks a fascia.
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Get the whole plot priced properly
House, drive, outbuildings and fencing, each with its own method. Free site visit, free written itemised quote, and a test area wherever the surface is doubtful.