Exterior cleaning in Bere Regis
Soft washing for old walls, roof moss removal, gutter and valley clearing, paths and paving across Bere Regis and BH20, at a pressure the building will take.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In a village with as much old fabric as Bere Regis, the first question is not how much pressure to use but whether the surface will take any at all. Soft brick, lime mortar and limewashed render are all cleaned at a pressure closer to a garden hose than a jet wash.
Bere Regis carries forty three listed entries, so there is a real chance the wall you want cleaned is older and softer than it looks, and a fair chance the house next door is different again. We do not price a village street off a photograph for that reason.
The calls we get here are the green film creeping up a wall on the weather side, a roof slope that has gone thick with moss, gutters and valleys full after a windy autumn, and paving by a back door that has turned slippery. We come out, tell you which surfaces are sound enough to clean and which want a look from a bricklayer first, and put the whole lot in writing.
The work
Cleaning old walls and roofs in a Dorset village
WORK Knowing what the wall is. Old brickwork with lime mortar in the joints, painted or limewashed render, and cob under a render coat all behave the same way under a lance, which is to say badly. Force water into a lime joint and it washes out, and then there is repointing to pay for on top of the clean. Where a Bere Regis wall is old, and the green on it is algae rather than anything the wall is doing wrong, we work at low pressure with a soft wash and an approved biocide, let the treatment kill the spore and hold the regrowth back over the following weeks, and come back rather than turn the pressure up. On the older buildings the covering is usually plain clay tile or slate, hung on battens and easy to lift if you are careless, with the moss in the laps and along the ridge and lichen spotting the older slates. It comes off by hand, the laps get cleared and the slope gets treated. If a roof is thatched we do not touch it, and nor should anyone else with a machine: that is a thatcher's job and we will tell you to ring one. Cast iron rainwater goods on an older property will not take a knock, so gutters are cleared by hand into bags and flushed gently. Block paved drives are re-sanded once they are dry, because the wash takes the joint sand out along with the weed and the black spot. This is a chalk village with a stream running through it and a lot of properties on soakaways rather than a mains surface water sewer, so we sheet the planting, protect the gully, bag the solids and keep run off out of any ditch or watercourse, which is what pollution prevention guidance requires of a working firm. Old garden walls and gate piers are cleaned only where the pointing is sound, and photographed rather than washed where it is not.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
With forty three entries on the national list in the village, including the parish church, there is a fair chance a Bere Regis property is one of them. Washing a listed building down is normally maintenance and needs no consent. Painting it, sealing it or applying any coating sold to you as part of a clean is a change of appearance, and that is where listed building consent from Dorset Council can be needed. We tell you which side of that line the work sits on before you commit to anything, and the written quote splits method, access and disposal by surface.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
How old the wall is decides the method, and the method decides the day. A cottage fronting straight onto the village street is worked off a tower with the pavement managed, a farm building down a track is reached from the yard, and a house on the edge of the village comes off a pole from its own lawn. The work at height rules rather than our preference set what goes up. Ask whether a second visit is part of the job, because on old surfaces the treatment usually needs one.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. If there is already scaffold up here for roofing or repointing, say so when you ring, because cleaning the elevation while the platform is standing saves paying for access twice. Otherwise tell us the date, a sale, a survey or an inspection, and we will say honestly whether it can be done properly by then. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
The south west wall is the one that stays wet
The exposed side of a building in this part of Dorset faces south west, and that is where the weather arrives from. Driven rain does not wet a wall evenly.
It soaks the windward elevation, and it works hardest at the edges and the openings rather than in the middle of a surface, so the growth on a Bere Regis house usually starts round the reveals, under the sills, along the verge and at the eaves. If you stand back and look at which parts of your own wall are greenest, you are looking at a map of where the rain hits and sits.
That changes the order of the work rather than the price of it. On the south west elevation we want the pointing and the render checked before anything is washed, because driven rain has already found any open joint and a lance would push water straight through it. The same face is the one worth treating rather than just rinsing, since it will be damp again within days.
And the gutter and outlet on that side matter more than they do anywhere else on the building: an overflow there runs down a wall that is already saturated. The Planning Portal guidance on external walls is worth a read if you are weighing up a coating for that elevation, because a sealed wall that cannot dry inwards is a worse problem than a green one.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
Bere Regis is fifteen miles out from us on the BH20 side, and we are through the village and along the A35 regularly for work in Wool, Winterborne Kingston and Milborne St Andrew. 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
Bere Regis questions we get asked
There are dozens of listed buildings here. Does that affect me?
Only if yours is one of them, and Bere Regis carries forty three listed entries, so it is worth establishing first. Cleaning a listed building is not consentable work in itself, but anything that alters the fabric is, and on old brick and lime mortar that line is easier to cross than most people expect. We work at low pressure on those and we write the method on the quote.
What happens to soft old brick if it is jetted?
The face comes off. A soft handmade brick has a fired skin over a much softer body, and a lance strips that skin and opens the body to water, after which it spalls with every hard frost. The same tool washes the binder out of a lime joint. Around Bere Regis there is enough of that fabric about that low pressure and a biocide are the default on walls.
Does the treated water get anywhere near a watercourse?
Not if the set up is done properly. Bere Regis sits in the Poole Harbour catchment, so biocide is kept off open ground, out of the ditch and away from anything running towards water. Beds and vegetable ground are sheeted, downpipes feeding a soakaway are capped where the fall allows it, and solids off the roof are bagged rather than hosed into the nearest border.
Which side of a village house needs doing first?
The south west one, every time. That is the exposed elevation around Bere Regis and it takes the weather off the open ground, so staining and growth build there while the sheltered sides still look presentable. We often clean and treat that single face and leave the rest, and we set out plainly on the quote which elevations are in, so nothing comes as a surprise afterwards.
Is a wash on old fabric better done in a certain season?
Spring or late summer. Old brick and lime need time to dry out afterwards, and a wall washed in November holds that water into the frosts, which is precisely when a soft face lets go. A biocide also wants a run of dry days to work down into the growth. Around Bere Regis we would rather move a date than put water on soft walls in the wrong week.
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A free site visit, an honest read on what your walls will take, and a written itemised quote with every surface on its own line.