Exterior cleaning in Breamore
Roofs, walls, gutters and paths cleaned at a pressure old fabric can actually take.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most of what wants cleaning in Breamore is old, soft and lime bedded, so the useful question is not how much pressure we can put on it but how little we can get away with. On old brick, flint and clay tile the answer is usually none, and a treatment instead.
Three things bring people to the phone here. A north-facing roof slope has gone dark and velvety and the moss is dropping into the gutter. A wall that used to be warm brick now reads grey and green from the lane. Or an outbuilding roof has quietly filled its valley and started putting water down the inside of the wall.
We come out and look at the fabric before we say a word about method, because the wrong method here does damage that no clean will put back. You get a written price with each elevation and each roof slope listed on its own, and an honest note against anything we think should be left as it is.
The work
The surfaces we meet around Breamore
Soft brick, flint and lime joints. Much of the walling here is old brick, flint panels, or brick with flint bands through it, and the mortar is lime rather than cement. Lime is meant to be softer than what it holds together, so force strips it out of a joint in seconds and you find out the following winter. On this kind of masonry we soft wash: an approved product at the strength on the label, time to work, then the gentlest rinse that shifts it, or a brush and no water at all. Sometimes the right answer is that the lichen on a two hundred year old brick elevation is doing nothing but looking its age, and we will say so.
Old clay tile, and why lichen is not moss. The older roofs here are plain clay tile, often hand made, thin, and hung on nibs that have been there a long time. A roof clean starts and mostly ends with the moss, because it dams the laps and holds water against the tile. Lichen is stuck to the tile face and taking it off takes fired surface with it, so we lift moss out of the laps and off the ridge, treat what is left, and leave the lichen where removing it would cost you tile. Nobody walks on a roof like that: it is worked off a pole or a tower.
Thatch, and staying away from it. There is thatch in the village and we do not clean it. What matters is what happens next to it. No biocide is sprayed where wind can carry it onto a thatched roof, and run off is diverted rather than allowed to cross one. If your neighbour has thatch, tell us before the day rather than on it.
The working buildings around the village are fibre cement sheet, corrugated metal and weatherboard. Sheet roofs green over on the north slope and the growth sits around every fixing, which is where the water gets in, so they are cleaned at low pressure from a tower. Plenty of the rainwater goods here are cast iron: clearing is by hand into a bag, never levered, and every outlet is run through afterwards. Before any of it starts the planting under the wall is wetted and sheeted and the gully covered, because on a village street run off has nowhere to go but the border and the drain. pollution prevention guidance and HSE rules on biocide use are why that gets planned first rather than mopped up afterwards.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Washing a wall needs no permission. Changing how it looks afterwards can. Breamore has its own conservation area and sixty three entries on the national list running through the village and the farms around it, so a paint, a coating or a water repellent is a different question from a clean. The Planning Portal sets out consents that sit outside planning permission and what counts as a change to an external wall, and if your property is on the list we will tell you to check before we book anything. New Forest District Council is the authority here. The quote itemises the method for each surface, the protection, and where the water and residue go.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
Old surfaces set their own pace, so what gets priced is time on site. A cottage on the street with no room to stand a tower, a farmhouse elevation over a deep flower bed, and a barn roof on open hardstanding are three different jobs before a drop of water is used. The work at height rules settle what can be worked from and what cannot. Ask what method each surface is getting, whether the treatment is included or it is only a rinse, and where the run off is going.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. Out here it is usually a sale, a building survey booked in, or scaffolding due off after roof work, and any of those we can plan around if we know early. Breamore is a long run for us, so village work gets batched and you get a day rather than a vague week. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
A conservation area changes what you do after the clean
Breamore is a conservation area, and that catches people out in a way that has nothing to do with washing. The clean itself is maintenance and nobody needs to be told about it. What follows the clean is where control starts: painting a wall that was never painted, putting a sealer or a water repellent coating on brick or stone, or rendering over something that was bare.
Those are changes of appearance, and in a conservation area, or on any of the sixty or so designated entries in and around the village, they can need consent in their own right. It is worth ten minutes with the local planning authority's map before you commit, because the boundary does not follow the village sign and the list is longer here than most people expect.
The practical version for a homeowner is simple. Clean, then look at it for a season before deciding it needs coating. Nine times out of ten the wall that looked like it needed painting just needed the algae off.
Sealers on old solid walls are the ones to be most careful with: a coating that stops the wall breathing traps damp behind it, and on soft brick that is how faces start to spall. If you want the wall to stay clean longer, the honest lever is drainage and shade, not a film over the surface.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Breamore, Woodgreen, Rockbourne, Sandleheath and the SP6 villages either side of the Avon, and the visit is worth making even for one elevation. 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
Breamore questions we get asked
Breamore is a conservation area. What does that mean for cleaning?
Less than people fear. The Breamore conservation area controls how the place looks, so a like for like clean is maintenance and needs nothing from the council. What it does control is change: a coating, a recolour, a different covering going on. With sixty three listed entries in the parish, the more useful question is whether your own building is listed, and that alters the method rather than the permission.
The flint and brick wall is crumbling. Can it be cleaned?
Only by hand and only carefully. Flint sits in lime, and once that lime has weathered back the flints are held by very little, so water at pressure takes them out and you have a repair on your hands instead of a clean. Around Breamore we brush growth off dry where we can and use a biocide on what remains. Where a joint is open, pointing comes first and cleaning follows.
Can you clean a barn roof as well as the house?
Yes, and out here the barn is often the bigger half of the job. Old clay tile and corrugated sheet both hold growth, and a barn roof usually has no gutter to catch what comes off, so the ground below has to be cleared and sheeted before we start. Several of the listed entries around Breamore are farm buildings, so we check whether yours is one before deciding how hard to work.
The river is at the bottom of the field. Does that matter?
It does, and it decides where we work from. The Avon runs through this parish, so nothing carrying a biocide is allowed to reach a ditch, a field drain or the river itself. We sheet the ground, bag the solids and keep treated run off going to a foul drain, and we show you exactly where that point is before a hose comes off the van.
You are seventeen miles away. Will you still quote a small job?
We will, though it becomes a booked date rather than a same day call. Breamore is roughly seventeen miles from the yard, so a smaller job gets tied in with other work up the Avon valley and you get a fixed morning for it. The visit to look and the written itemised quote are free either way, and Thomas comes out to price it himself.
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