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.
Around Boldre the problem is rarely the surface itself. It is what keeps landing on it. Leaf litter, needles and permanent shade are what turn a sound roof green, so clearing and treating 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 calls we get here are for 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 quite often the honest recommendation is a gutter clear and a treatment rather than the full clean you rang about.
The work
Cleaning a house that lives under trees
Gutters, valleys and outlets. This is the main job in Boldre and the one most worth paying for. Oak leaves, holly and pine needles fill a gutter run in a single autumn, a valley between two roof slopes packs solid and then sends water sideways under the tiles, and the outlet at the top of a downpipe blocks first. We clear it out by hand into bags rather than flushing it down the pipe and into the soakaway, check every joint and outlet, and wash the fascia and soffit down while we are up there.
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 rather than 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
From your call to a written price
Boldre is inside the New Forest National Park, so the planning authority here is the National Park Authority rather than the district council. Cleaning a surface is maintenance and needs nobody's consent. Changing how a building looks is a different matter, and with eleven entries on the national list near here it is worth checking your own address on the National Park Authority's interactive property map before you agree to any painting, sealing or coating. There is no conservation area over Boldre itself. The quote is itemised by surface, with access and disposal on their own lines, and what comes out of the gutters leaves with us.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
Under trees the amount of growth is the variable, and it is the one you cannot see from a plan. A cottage down a Forest lane is worked from its own drive, a two storey house with the gable under an oak wants a tower, and an outbuilding at the end of a gravel track means running the hose a long way from the van. The work at height rules decide what goes up for the high work. Ask whether a second visit is included, because a shaded surface usually needs one.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. Leaf fall around Boldre runs from late September into December, so a gutter clear booked for the far side of it is worth two booked at the wrong time of year. If you have a fixed date, a sale or a survey, tell us the day and we will tell you straight. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
The trees decide your maintenance schedule, not the calendar
A house in the open needs its gutters looked at every year or two. A house under mature oak and holly in Boldre needs them cleared after leaf fall every single year, and on some plots twice. 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, the valleys and the outlets 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 rather than simply wash the shaded surfaces, 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
A local firm you can check
Boldre is fifteen miles round to us and we are in the SO41 side of the Forest most weeks, working Lymington, Brockenhurst, Pilley 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
Boldre questions we get asked
The oaks drop everything into our valleys. What can be done?
A valley under a tree wants looking at twice a year rather than once, because it is the one place where leaf and silt build into a dam. Boldre sits inside the New Forest National Park with mature planting on most plots, and the moment a valley holds water it runs sideways under the covering and shows on the ceiling below. Clearing it is quick work, replastering a ceiling is not.
What goes wrong first on the newer houses here?
The verges and the plastic. 42.9% of Boldre's homes went up between 1983 and 2008, and that generation 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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Free site visit, gutters, roof, walls and paving each priced on their own line, and an honest answer about what actually needs doing this year.