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.
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Exterior cleaning in Bere Regis starts with whether a surface will take any pressure at all, because the village has so much old fabric. Soft brick, lime mortar and limewashed render are all soft washed 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.
Typical problems 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
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 a second time before we would ever turn the pressure up.
Roofs and rainwater. 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 gutter clearing here is careful hand work, priced on its own. 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 draining to soakaways, not 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 but left unwashed where it is not.
How it runs
Cleaning walls, roofs and paving in Bere Regis
Thomas comes out and looks at each surface: the render or brick, the roof slopes, the gutters and the paving. He tells you which ones are sound enough to clean and which need a repair first. The quote splits method, access and disposal by surface, and says whether a biocide treatment and a second visit are part of it. Every surface on that quote is one company's responsibility.
Old brick, soft stone and lime mortar are cleaned gently, with low pressure and a biocide left to work. Blasting strips the face. Roofs are never pressure washed. Plants and windows are protected, run-off is kept out of drains where the product calls for it, and the site is left tidy each day with the debris taken away. If cleaning shows up cracked render or loose pointing, you get a photograph of it and a separate price for the repair.
The parish has forty three listed entries, including the church, and the Bere Regis Conservation Area covers the old centre, so it is worth knowing what cleaning needs. Washing a listed building is normally maintenance. Painting, sealing or coating it as part of a clean is a change of appearance, and that can need listed building consent, which Dorset Council handles. We tell you which side of that line the work sits on before you commit.
Cost
Surface, method and height set a cleaning price
The price follows the surface and the method, not the size of the house. A small cottage with a mossy roof can take longer than a big house with clean render.
What is being cleaned. Algae on smooth render comes off with a soft wash. Lichen on old brick or stone needs a biocide applied and left for weeks to work, then a second visit. Moss on a roof is removed by hand and treated, not washed off.
The weather side. Walls facing south west stay damp longest after rain here, and the green film on them is usually thicker and slower to clear.
Height and access. A cottage fronting the street is worked off a tower with the footway kept safe. A house set back in its garden can often be done from the ground with a pole. The work at height rules decide what goes up.
Run-off. Where the water and treatment go matters near gardens and drains, and some products need the run-off collected. HSE guidance on biocides governs how they are used.
Ask any other cleaner what method and pressure they will use on each surface, whether a second visit is included, and what product is being applied.
If there is a date
A deadline, a viewing or a slippery path
If the paving by a door has turned green and slippery, put grit or sand down and stop using that route until it is treated. If you have a sale, a survey or a visitor coming, tell us the date. Ring us, as the form is slower.
We book cleaning Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When you call and nobody answers, we ring back as soon as the job in hand allows. The first visit looks at each surface and tells you honestly what can be done properly by your date. If a scaffold is already up for roofing or repointing, say so, because cleaning while it stands saves paying for access twice.
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, not 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
Who cleans your house, and how to check
From Boscombe, where we are based, Bere Regis is 17 miles, and we take cleaning work in the village and around BH20, including Wool, Winterborne Kingston and Milborne St Andrew, all under Dorset Council. The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Bere Regis, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Thomas Hannen, who owns and runs it, looks at your walls, roof and paving and prices the clean himself. A verified customer gave us a 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit costs nothing, and neither does the written quote with each surface listed.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Bere Regis?
Most repairs in Bere Regis 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.
| Question | In Bere Regis |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Bere Regis. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Bere Regis Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Bere Regis. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Bere Regis. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Bere Regis
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 can 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.