Exterior cleaning in Bryanston
Roofs, brick and flint walls, gutters and paving cleaned without loosening the mortar.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Exterior cleaning in Bryanston is soft wash work. Nearly everything worth cleaning here is brick, flint or clay tile with soft mortar behind it, and it sits under big parkland trees. That combination rules out a pressure lance and rules in a treatment, a bit of patience and a second visit if it needs one.
In Bryanston it is usually the roof, a shaded wall or the paving that needs attention. The roof slope facing the trees has gone dark and the moss is filling the gutter. A brick or flint elevation has greened over on the shaded side and now looks nothing like the rest of the row. Or the paving and the parking area have gone black and slippery under the canopy, which after a wet autumn happens quickly.
We come out, look at what the walls are actually built of, and price the roof, each elevation and each hard surface as its own line. Where we think a surface is better treated than washed, or better left alone, that goes on the quote too, with the reason written next to it.
The work
Brick, flint, tile and everything under the trees
Flint and brick walls with lime mortar. Estate-built cottages, garden walls and the long boundary walls along the lanes in Bryanston are brick, knapped flint, or the two banded together, and the joints are lime. Flint is glass hard and could take almost anything.
The mortar around it cannot, and a jet wash pops flints out of a panel one at a time. So this is soft wash work: an approved biocide at the strength on the label, dwell time, then a low pressure rinse with a wide nozzle, or a brush and no water at all. Where a wall has already lost mortar, we point that out and leave it for repointing before it gets washed.
Clay tile roofs and the moss line. Plain clay tile with mortar bedded ridges is the common covering on the older fifth of Bryanston, and moss builds first in the bottom third of the slope and along the laps, which is exactly where water needs to run freely. A roof clean means lifting that growth out by hand from a pole or tower, then treating what is left so the roots die instead of coming straight back. Nobody walks the roof. Old clay is brittle, and the mortar on a ridge of that age will not survive being aimed at.
Sooty mould is the local one in Bryanston. The mature parkland trees drop honeydew through the summer and a black film grows on it. It is not algae or lichen, it is stickier, and it lands on cars, paving, window frames and the top of a render band. It comes off with the right product and a gentle rinse; force just moves it around and takes the paint with it. Lime and chestnut leaf blocks an outlet fast, so gutter clearing, parapet gutters first, is worth booking with the wash.
Where a house is one elevation in a terrace, doing one and not the next is money half spent. Gravel, block paving, stone paving and concrete all take a different pressure, and a rendered plinth beside them takes less again. Block paving is washed, weeded out and re-sanded so the blocks lock up again. Planting is wetted and sheeted first, gullies and drains are covered and watched, and residue is kept out of any ditch running to the Stour, which is what pollution prevention guidance and HSE guidance on biocide use both come down to. Anything above single storey is work at height.
How it runs
Cleaning brick, flint and render without harming it
Thomas comes out, looks at each surface and what is growing on it, and prices it himself. The quote sets out, surface by surface, the method, how planting and drains are protected, how we reach it, and where the run-off and residue go. You have one point of contact for the whole clean.
Lime-jointed flint and soft old brick are cleaned with low pressure and a biocide that is left to work, not blasted, because high pressure strips the joints. Render gets a soft wash; block paving and patios can take more. Plants are covered or wetted down, drains are guarded, and on a lane with hedges tight to the wall we set any tower where it keeps the road open. Debris is swept and taken away each day. Cracked render or open joints revealed by the clean are photographed and priced as a separate job, if you want it.
Cleaning needs no consent. Painting, sealing or coating something that was bare brick, flint or stone afterwards may, especially inside a conservation area, and Dorset Council can tell you whether your address is in one. The Planning Portal explains what counts as work to an external wall, and a listed building needs listed building consent, the same as the school or the Portman Chapel would.
Cost
Why a clean is priced by surface, not by area
Cleaning is not priced off area alone. Two walls the same size can be an hour apart once you know what is on them and how it has to come off.
The surface. Lime-jointed flint, painted render, bare brick, stone and block paving each need their own method and pressure, and some need none at all. A biocide wash that has to be left and rinsed later means a return visit, which is priced in from the start, not added afterwards.
What is growing. A light green film comes off quickly. Thick moss and black lichen on a north face that never dries takes treatment and time, not more pressure. Moss on a roof slope is scraped off by hand before any wash.
Reaching it. A cottage wall with a hedge tight against it, a tall brick elevation and a flint boundary wall on the lane are all different set-ups. The work at height rules decide whether a tower goes up.
The run-off. Protecting planting and drains, and keeping biocide out of the river under pollution prevention guidance, adds setup time this close to the Stour.
Other firms should be able to tell you how each surface will be treated, whether the return visit is in their price, and where the dirty water goes.
If there is a date
Getting a clean done before a date
Cleaning is rarely a true emergency, but there is often a date: a sale, a new tenant, or scaffolding about to come down after other work. Ring and tell us the date.
Scheduled cleaning runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and if we miss your call, we call back as soon as we can. We will tell you honestly whether it can be done properly by then, because a biocide treatment needs time to work. School term traffic can affect access on that side of Bryanston, so we plan round it.
The one local thing
A conservation area, and a village that matches itself
Bryanston is inside the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area, and the practical effect for a homeowner is about what happens after the clean rather than the clean itself. Washing a wall is maintenance and nobody needs to approve it. Painting a brick or flint elevation that was never painted, putting a coloured render over it, or sealing it with a water repellent film, are changes of appearance and can need consent in their own right.
The eleven or so designated entries around Bryanston sit mainly on the school estate, the Portman Chapel among them, and not among the houses, so for most homeowners it is the conservation area rules that apply, not listed building consent. It is still worth checking your own address before committing to anything that changes colour or finish.
The other half of it is the village looking like itself. A lot of the housing was built as a matched estate, in the same brick and the same flint, in rows and pairs. Clean one elevation of a matched pair to bright new brick and you have not improved the row, you have made your neighbour's half look neglected and your own look scrubbed. So the aim changes, and so does the booking.
First, aim for the growth off rather than the weathering off: taking a wall back to as-built is neither achievable on soft brick nor desirable. Second, if you share a boundary wall or a terrace front, ask the neighbours before you book. Doing a whole run in one visit costs less per house than doing them one at a time, and it leaves the street looking right.
Who you are dealing with
Cleaning homes across the DT11 villages
We clean houses, walls and paving in Bryanston, Blandford St Mary, Blandford Forum, Stourpaine and the DT11 villages along the Stour valley. We are 17.3 miles away in Boscombe, and Dorset Council is the local council.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen, the owner, comes and looks at each surface and puts the price together himself. On Checkatrade you will find a verified customer's rating of 10 out of 10. We do not charge for the visit or the written quote, which breaks down every surface. Before you book a visit in Bryanston, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Bryanston?
Most repairs in Bryanston 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 Bryanston |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Bryanston. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Bryanston. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Dorset National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Bryanston
We are mid terrace. Can our front be washed alone?
A mid terrace front can be washed alone, but ask next door first. Where fronts run on in one line, a single clean elevation between two green ones stands out, and the growth on the neighbours' walls and roof reseeds across the joint. A whole run done in one visit costs less per house. A shared gutter is the same story, and is best cleared end to end.
Does the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston conservation area limit this?
Not for cleaning: the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area controls how a building looks, and a wash puts it back to how it looked, so no consent comes into it. What the designation does catch is a sealer, a coating or a colour change afterwards, and that would go to Dorset Council first. The same care applies near the 11 listed entries here, the Portman Chapel at Bryanston School included.
We hold a lease on a flat. Who instructs the work?
The freeholder or the managing agent, in almost every case. On a flat in Bryanston the roof, the walls and the shared paths belong to the building, not to any one home, so the work is funded through the service charge. A leaseholder can ask for a quote and pass it up, and we are content to send it to both of you.
We are inland here. Why is the render still black?
Because it is not salt doing it. At 26.0km from the coast nothing is being kept damp by sea air, so what you have is algae and lichen living off shade, tree cover and rain that lingers on a rough face. It is a film rather than a crust. A biocide kills it and it then weathers away over several weeks, which looks slower than jetting but leaves the render surface intact.
Does Thomas look at the property before quoting?
He does, every time, and he prices it himself afterwards. He walks the plot at Bryanston, paces out the gutter runs, looks at the state of the render and the paving and works out how much can be done from the ground. The visit is free and so is the written quote, which is itemised, so the house, the outbuildings and the paths appear as separate lines you can take or leave.
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Exterior cleaning near Bryanston
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Free quote
Get it looked at before it is booked
We will come out, tell you what each surface needs and what it does not, and put it in writing. Both are free.