Exterior cleaning in Blandford Forum

Painted and rendered frontages. A great many Blandford fronts are rendered and painted, and paint is the surface you are cleaning, not the wall behind it. It gets soft washed at low pressure with a biocide, working top down, so the algae and its spores die before they can be driven into the coating and returning as regrowth by the spring.

A jet wash here does real damage and strips paint off in sheets. Where the paint is already blown or flaking, washing it will take it off, and we would rather show you that at the site visit and quote for the sound elevations only.

Old brickwork. Nearly a fifth of Blandford Forum predates 1919. The brick is soft and the joints are lime, and the two together are the easiest surface in Dorset to ruin with a machine. No lance, no turbo nozzle, nothing that would move mortar. Low pressure, a treatment, and time. If the pointing has already gone we say so and stop, because a clean before repointing is money spent twice.

Roofs are plain clay tile and slate on the older stock, concrete interlocking and pebbledash gables on the post war and 1970s housing round the edges of Blandford Forum. Moss is scraped off by hand, the laps and the ridge cleared, and the slope treated. Clearing the valley between two slopes is often what stops the leak somebody rang about in the first place. With 31.1% of the town terraced, a roof frequently runs on over several houses, and we say plainly that cleaning one length is short lived unless the neighbours come in on it.

Gutters, parapets and downpipes. Older Blandford buildings often drain behind a parapet, where a blocked outlet shows as a damp patch inside long before anybody sees it from the pavement, so ask about gutter clearing when the fronts are washed. Nearly a quarter of Blandford Forum is flats, so on a converted front the photographs we take of each wall are often what an agent or a residents' company actually needs.

A lot of Blandford Forum fronts straight onto the pavement, so a clean here is as much about protection as pressure. Doorways, shopfronts and planting get sheeted, the drain and the gully get covered, and the run off is controlled and never left to find the road, which is what pollution prevention guidance asks of us. We use only products approved for the surface and work to the label, as the biocides regime the HSE administers requires. Where the street is busy we work early, and that is the honest reason a town centre elevation takes the time it does.

On the estate housing at the edges that means block paving cleaned and re-sanded, and slabbed patios lifted out of moss and lichen. In the town it is more often a back yard, a passage or a set of steps, done by hand with the water managed, and a survey of a town yard nearly always turns up a gully nobody has lifted in years.

On a town street the access can cost more than the cleaning. Access. A terrace on the pavement needs a tower and the footway managed. A flat above a shop reaches only its own elevation. A detached house on the edge of town can often be done with a pole from the garden. The work at height rules and the pavement set the access.

The surface. Green algae on smooth render lifts with a soft wash, whereas lichen on old brick needs a biocide that is left to work, and a return visit. Moss on a roof is scraped off by hand, then treated.

The roof and gutters. Moss scraped off a roof has to come out of the gutters as well, so a roof clean usually includes clearing them, and that is priced in.

Timing. On a busy street, the work may need an early start or working around shop hours, which adds cost.

Run-off. The water and chemicals have to be kept away from drains and borders, and HSE guidance on biocides controls the products.

Ask rival cleaners which method and pressure each surface gets, whether footway protection and an early start are in the price, and whether the return visit is included.

Our base in Boscombe sits 16.8 miles from Blandford Forum. Exterior cleaning takes us across the town and to the lanes off the A354, as well as Bryanston, Stourpaine and Blandford St Mary, all within Dorset Council's area.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, is the firm. Its owner Thomas Hannen inspects the walls, roof and paving and puts the price together himself. We carry a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Coming out to look costs you nothing, and the written quote, surface by surface, is free too. Before you book a visit in Blandford Forum, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Blandford Forum 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.