Exterior cleaning in Boldre
Gutters and valleys cleared, roof moss removed and treated, walls soft washed and paving cleaned around Boldre and the SO41 side of the New Forest.
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 Boldre is mostly about what keeps landing on a surface, not the surface itself. Leaf litter, needles and permanent shade are what turn a sound roof or wall green, so a soft wash and a treatment beats anything you can do with more pressure.
Boldre sits inside the New Forest with mature oak, holly and pine over a lot of the properties in it, and that changes the whole maintenance picture. Gutters fill twice as fast, valleys pack solid, north walls never dry out, and gravel and block drives green over under the canopy.
So the usual problems under the trees here are gutters running over, a roof slope thick with moss on the shaded side, a green film up the back wall, and paving that has gone slippery by October. We come and look at all of it, and the honest recommendation is sometimes a treatment on its own, not the full clean you rang about.
The work
Cleaning a house that lives under trees
Gutters, valleys and outlets. Oak leaves, holly and pine needles can fill a gutter run here in a single autumn, so gutter clearing is worth booking alongside any roof or wall clean, with the fascia and soffit washed down from the same access.
A slope under a tree canopy is damp for most of the year and the litter sitting on it holds water against the tile, so moss establishes far faster here than it would on an open site. Most of the housing dates from the 1980s onwards, which means concrete tile, and that covering never gets a lance: the force lifts the tile, loosens the mortar and drives water under the lap. The moss comes off by hand, the laps and the ridge get cleared, and the slope is treated with a biocide so the spores die back.
The shaded elevation of a house under trees grows a green film that people mistake for damp. It soft washes off at low pressure with a treatment behind it. Painted timber, boarding and porches are done by hand at the same time, because that is where a machine does its damage. Block paving and slabs go green and then genuinely slippery under a canopy, so we lift the growth, wash at a pressure the surface will take, and re-sand block paving joints afterwards. Gravel drives get raked and treated, not washed, and sealing is rarely the right answer on a shaded surface.
Where the water and the debris end up. A lot of Boldre properties drain to a soakaway, a ditch or a stream rather than a mains surface water sewer. So the solids get bagged and leave with us, the gully and any drain get protected, planting is sheeted, and the run off is kept out of the watercourse. That is what pollution prevention guidance asks of a firm working here, and it is not optional.
How it runs
Soft washing walls, roofs and paths under the trees
Thomas comes to look at what needs cleaning: render, brick, a roof, gutters, a patio or a drive. He checks what the growth is, green algae, black lichen or moss, and what each surface will stand. The quote is itemised by surface, with access, the biocide treatment and disposal on lines of their own.
Each surface gets its own method. Render and painted walls get a soft wash at low pressure with a biocide that kills the growth at the root. Brick and paving can take a pressure washer. Moss on a roof is scraped off by hand and treated. Blasting damages tiles. Plants and windows are covered and rinsed off, and the moss and gutter debris are bagged and taken away. If we spot a cracked tile, blown render or a leaking gutter while we work, we point it out with a photo and a separate price and leave the decision with you.
Cleaning is maintenance and needs no consent. Painting, sealing or coating changes how a building looks, and the conservation area here spreads from the church and Heywood Manor to Bull Hill and Pilley, so look your address up on the National Park Authority’s interactive property map before agreeing to any coating. The biocides we use come under the HSE rules on biocides.
Cost
Shade, growth and how far the hose has to run
How much growth there is decides most of the price, and under trees that is hard to judge from a photo.
Shade and trees. Plenty of Boldre houses sit near woodland, so the north and shaded sides grow algae and moss quickly. Heavy growth needs a longer treatment, and sometimes a second visit to finish once the biocide has done its work.
The surface. Render needs a gentle soft wash. Brick and concrete paving take more pressure. Roof tiles are cleaned by hand. Each has its own line on the quote.
Getting up there. A bungalow can be reached from the ground with a pole. A two storey gable under an oak needs a tower or a reach pole, worked under the work at height rules.
Water and run-off. A cottage down a lane is worked from its own drive. An outbuilding at the end of a gravel track means running the hose a long way from the van, and the run-off has to be kept out of any ditch or stream.
Ask other quotes whether the biocide is left to work, whether a second visit is included, and whether the gutters are cleared as part of the job.
If there is a date
A sale, a survey or leaf fall on the way
Exterior cleaning is rarely an emergency, but a date can make it urgent. If you have a sale, a survey or a family event coming, tell us the day and we will say honestly what can be done properly by then.
Leaf fall round Boldre runs from autumn into winter, so a gutter clear booked after the leaves are down does more good than one booked before. A path or step gone slippery with algae is a fall waiting to happen, so grit it or scrub it until we come. The phone is quicker than the form. Work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If we miss you, we will phone back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
The trees decide your maintenance schedule, not the calendar
A house in the open can go years between cleans. A house under mature oak and holly in Boldre sits in shade and drip all year, so its north wall and shaded roof slope green over again far sooner. The litter is only half of it.
What the canopy really does is keep the roof and the north wall damp, because the sun never gets to them and the wind never gets under them, and damp surfaces are what moss, algae and lichen need. That is why a Forest property can be green again eighteen months after a clean that would have lasted five years three miles away on an open site.
The useful conclusion is to spend the money in the right order. Get the gutters and valleys clear first, because overflowing rainwater goods soak the wall below them all winter and will undo a wall clean from the top down.
Then treat the shaded surfaces, not just wash them, since a rinse on something that stays damp looks good for a few weeks. Then, if you can, cut back whatever overhangs the roof, which will buy you more than any product will. Do it in that order and a full clean becomes something you need occasionally rather than something you book every spring.
Who you are dealing with
Cleaning round the Forest from our Boscombe base
Boldre sits about thirteen miles from our base in Boscombe. We clean houses, roofs, paths and drives in the village and Pilley and along the lanes to Lymington and Brockenhurst. Painting or coating a wall in the conservation area is a question for the New Forest National Park Authority.
You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which is Thomas Hannen’s business. He looks at the walls, the roof and the paving in person and prices the clean himself. On Checkatrade you will find a verified customer’s 10 out of 10. Coming out to look is free, as is the itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Boldre, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Boldre?
Most repairs in Boldre 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 Boldre |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Boldre. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Forest South East Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Boldre. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Boldre
The oaks keep our north wall green. What can be done?
Treat it, and let in some light if you can. Boldre sits inside the New Forest National Park with mature planting on most plots, and a wall under a canopy stays damp long after the rain stops, so a rinse on its own looks tired again within a season. A soft wash with a biocide left to work lasts far longer. Check before cutting back, because many trees here are protected.
What goes wrong first on the newer houses here?
The verges and the plastic. Houses built from the eighties onwards brought dry verge clips, plastic fascia and thin bedding at the ridge. Sunlight makes the plastic brittle, growth lifts the clip, and the fixing gives way long before the tile itself does. A wash brings all of that to light, so we photograph anything loose and list it separately.
It is a narrow lane with soft verges. Where does the van go?
On the drive if there is room for it, and where there is not we work off a longer hose run and reposition once. The lanes around Boldre have soft verges and no passing space, and parking on the grass is how a van ends up in a ditch and a neighbour ends up furious. Thomas looks at that at the visit, because it settles the order the elevations get done in.
What does the black streak down the render mean?
An overflow, nearly always. Water going over the front of a gutter runs down the wall in the same line every time and grows algae in that stripe, so the mark shows where the blockage sits before anyone puts a ladder up. On the shaded plots around Boldre the whole wall can be green while the stripe stays darker still. Clear the gutter and the stripe stops coming back.
Why treat the roof first and clear the gutters afterwards?
Because everything that dies on the roof ends up in the gutter, and doing the runs first means doing them twice. On a Boldre roof shaded by mature trees there can be a barrow of dead growth to come down once the treatment has worked through, so we plan a second call to clear the runs and flush the outlets. That second visit is written into the quote as its own line.
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