Exterior cleaning in Beacon Hill
Roof cleaning, render soft washing, gutters, drives and patios around Beacon Hill and BH16. We tell you what each surface will take before anything gets switched on.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Very little on a Beacon Hill house wants a pressure washer held against it. Concrete roof tiles, dry dash render and forty year old block paving all come back better under low pressure with a biocide treatment behind it, and that is what we price.
People here ring us for one of three things. The bungalow roof has gone green all over and you can see the whole of it from the garden, so there is nowhere for it to hide. The render is streaked black under the gutter joints and along the top of the garage. Or the drive and the path have turned slippery and somebody nearly went over on them.
We come out, look at every surface you want doing, and tell you which of them takes pressure and which does not. Then you get one written price with each surface on its own line, so you can have the roof done now and the drive in the spring if that suits you better.
The work
What we get called to on Beacon Hill houses
Roof cleaning. Most of Beacon Hill went up between the mid 1970s and the late 1980s, and that means concrete interlocking tile on a shallow pitch on nearly every house in it. Concrete is porous, a shallow pitch drains slowly, and water sits in the laps, so moss does not pick a patch here, it takes the whole slope. We scrape the bulk off by hand, clear the laps and the ridge line, then treat what is left with a biocide so the spores die rather than get moved about. What we will not do is put a lance on a concrete tile: the force takes the surface off, opens the mortar under the ridge, and gives the moss a better key than it had before.
The 1970s houses carry a lot of dry dash pebbledash on the gable and the upper storey, and the later ones tend to be smooth render, painted. Pebbledash is the one people get wrong. It is a stuck on surface and a jet wash strips it, so it is soft washed at low pressure with a treatment. Black streaking under a gutter joint is a leak telling you where it is, and it comes straight back if the joint is not sorted first.
Beacon Hill sits with heath and pine on its doorstep and the needles end up in the gutter run, the valley and the outlet at the top of the downpipe. We clear it by hand into a bag rather than flush it into the gully, then wash the fascia and soffit while the access is there. A lot of the block paving here is original to the house and has held moss in the joints ever since, so we lift the growth, wash the blocks and re-sand the joints, because a drive left unsanded loses its interlock and starts to rut.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Beacon Hill has no conservation area of its own and nothing listed in it, so a clean here is ordinary maintenance and needs nobody's permission. That is rarer on this patch than people expect, and it means the finish on your walls is your choice rather than the council's. It is only when you go past cleaning, to painting or coating a wall, that the listed building consent rules Dorset Council administers would come into it, and on this settlement they do not. The written quote sets out the method for each surface, the access, and where the water and residue go.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
What you are buying is time on a surface, not coverage of it. A bungalow roof here comes off a reach pole from the lawn, a two storey detached wants a tower to get at the gable properly, and a garage roof tucked behind a fence has to be reached by hand. The work at height rules rather than our preference decide which of those it is. When you compare prices, ask what method goes on each surface, whether a second visit is in the job, and where the run off ends up.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. This is not emergency work, but it usually has a date on it. If a Beacon Hill house is going on the market, the roof and the drive are the two things a photographer cannot avoid, so tell us which room the camera starts in and when it is booked. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Nothing here is listed, so the finish is your decision
This is unusual enough on our patch to be worth saying plainly. Beacon Hill has no conservation area and no listed entries, so nobody has a say in what colour your render is, whether your drive gets sealed or what your roof tiles look like when we have finished. If a quote you have been given mentions consent, or a form, or the council, for a straight clean, it is selling you something that does not exist here.
The one planning rule that does still bite is about replacing rather than cleaning: if you decide the drive is past washing and you lay more than five square metres of non permeable surface at the front, Planning Portal guidance on paving your front garden explains when that stops being permitted development.
What that freedom does not do is make the surface any tougher. The limit on this estate is physical, not legal. Dry dash render only stays on the wall while it is left alone, concrete tiles lose their face to a lance, and paving that has been sealed while it is still damp goes milky and has to be stripped.
So the honest answer on a Beacon Hill house is that you can have whatever finish you want, and the way to keep it is to have the surface cleaned gently and treated, then leave it alone for a couple of years.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We are eight miles from Beacon Hill and out along the BH16 side of the A35 most weeks, covering Lytchett Minster, Upton, Sturminster Marshall and the lanes between them. 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
Beacon Hill questions we get asked
We are in the Green Belt. Does that restrict cleaning?
It does not. Green Belt policy is about new building and extensions, not about washing what already stands, and Beacon Hill has no conservation area and no listed entries whatsoever. So the covering, the colour and the timing are entirely yours to settle. The only permission that ever comes up on these streets is a neighbour's, and only if we need to stand a pole or a ladder on their side.
The soffit is going soft under the gutter. Why?
Because the gutter has been quietly going over the front for a while. On the 1970s and early 1980s houses that make up much of Beacon Hill the guttering is a shallow half round with long runs and a single outlet, and once silt builds at the low end the water spills onto the fascia. Clearing it is the fix, and the soffit repair goes on the quote as a separate item.
Where does the wash water end up on our plot?
The short answer is a foul gully, not a soakaway and not a border. Anything carrying a biocide is kept off open ground and well away from a ditch, and the beds closest to the elevation get sheeted before we start. Solids off the roof are bagged and travel on the van. On the Beacon Hill plots the fall of the drive usually shows where water wants to run, and we work with it.
What is the difference between a wash and a treatment?
A wash shifts what is sitting on the surface today. A treatment kills the root of the algae and lichen so the surface stays clear far longer, and it works over weeks rather than in an afternoon. On most Beacon Hill roofs we do both in that order, and on a badly grown roof we sometimes treat first, wait, then clear, because dead growth lifts with much less water.
How many days does a house and drive run to?
One day on site covers most of it for the detached and semi properties that make up just over half of Beacon Hill, with the drive eating the bulk of that because paving is slow going. The treatment then carries on by itself for a few weeks afterwards. Heavy gutters or a conservatory roof under the eaves push it to two visits, and Thomas says which at the quote.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Beacon Hill
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Beacon Hill
Everything we do in Corfe Mullen Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a price for cleaning your Beacon Hill house
A free site visit, an honest answer about what each surface will take, and a written itemised quote you can compare against anyone else's.