Exterior cleaning in Cadnam and Bartley
Roof moss, green render, blocked gutters and slippery paving across Cadnam, Bartley and Copythorne, cleaned by the method the surface can take.
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 Cadnam and Bartley is almost never about dirt. It is green: algae on the shaded side of the render, moss packed down between the roof tiles, and a drive gone dark under the trees. A soft wash sorts most of it, and nothing goes near a surface at a pressure it cannot take.
Around Cadnam and Bartley the oak and beech overhead decide what goes wrong first. Gutters running over in the first proper autumn gale, because a house standing under oak and beech fills them several times faster than one on an open estate. A roof that has gone green on the slope you look at every time you come up the drive. And block paving or a slab patio that has darkened, grown weed in every joint and turned slippery by the back door.
None of that means doing the whole outside of the house. We come out and look at each surface on its own, then tell you which of them genuinely needs work this year and which will keep. The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. If a gutter clearing and one elevation washed down is all it wants, that is what the price will say.
The work
What needs doing on the forest edge
Roofs, and mostly moss. A lot of the houses out in Cadnam and Bartley went up in the late sixties and seventies with concrete interlocking tile, and that tile holds moss the way a sponge holds water. Under trees it never dries out.
We take the bulk off dry with a scrape and a brush, clear it out of the valleys and off the ridge, then treat what is left so the spores die instead of coming straight back. What we will not do is jet wash a concrete tile: the pressure strips the surface off, lifts the laps and pushes water underneath, and you get a clean roof that leaks.
Under oak and beech the outlet at the head of a downpipe packs first and the run comes over the fascia, so book gutter clearing, flat roof outlets included, alongside any wash.
The shaded elevations go green early and the ones facing the lane pick up road film on top of it. That is a soft wash. There are older houses out in Cadnam and Bartley among the newer ones, so there is more soft lime mortar about than people expect, and it gets no lance at all, because force is what takes a joint out. Block paving is washed, weeded and re-sanded with kiln dried sand, and the planting nearest the wall is wetted and sheeted before anything starts.
How it runs
Soft washing a roof, render or patio under the trees
Thomas comes out and looks at each surface you want cleaned: the roof, render, brick, patio, drive or gutters. Under the tree cover in Cadnam and Bartley, north faces and shaded roofs grow moss, algae and lichen quickly, and each surface needs its own method.
Concrete roof tiles are cleaned by hand and with a low-pressure soft wash, never with a jet that strips their surface. Render and painted walls get a biocide and a gentle rinse. A patio can take more pressure. The written quote is itemised: each surface and its method, protection, access and disposal.
One company is answerable for the clean, from the written quote onwards. Plants, windows and cars are covered, and moss scraped off the roof is bagged rather than washed into your gutters. The biocides we use fall under the regime the HSE administers, and the run-off is kept away from ditches and streams. Should the wash uncover a slipped tile or a patch of blown render, we photograph it, price it and leave it for you to decide.
Washing is maintenance and needs no permission. Coating is different. If a clean is going to be followed by masonry paint or a sealer, check the address on the National Park Authority's map first, especially in Bartley, which lies in the Forest North East conservation area. On a listed building the method matters, and the Authority's heritage guidance covers it.
Cost
What sets the price of a clean round the Forest
We do not price cleaning by the square metre. The same wall can take a few minutes or an afternoon depending on what has grown on it.
How much growth, and what kind. A light green film on render comes off with a biocide and a rinse. Thick moss on concrete tiles, or black lichen on a shaded wall under oaks, takes hand work and a second treatment.
The surface. Old soft brick on a cottage, painted render, concrete tiles and sandstone paving each need a different pressure and product. Getting it wrong damages the surface, which is why the method is written on the quote.
Height and access. A bungalow off one of the lanes in Cadnam and Bartley is mostly done from the ground with a pole. A detached house set back behind trees may need a tower for the roof, and the roofwork rules decide whether a pole is enough.
Water and run-off. Where the water drains to a ditch or a stream rather than a gully, the run-off has to be controlled, as pollution prevention guidance expects.
Ask of any other quote: which surfaces get a biocide and which a rinse, what pressure goes on the roof, and where does the dirty water go?
If there is a date
A sale, a visit, or growth that is getting worse
Cleaning is rarely an emergency, but some things are worth not leaving. Moss built up on a roof lifts the tile edges and holds water, and in autumn it washes into the gutters and blocks them. A patio gone green under the trees is slippery all winter.
If you have a date, such as a sale, a viewing or family coming to stay, ring and tell us, so we can say which surfaces to do first if time is short. The first visit looks at each surface and what it needs. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Phone us, and if we are up a ladder when you ring, we call you back when we are down.
Worth knowing
Clean it, or change it, are two different questions here
Everything in this village sits inside the New Forest National Park, and the thing the Authority takes an interest in is how a building looks. That line falls in a useful place for you.
Cleaning puts back the surface that was already there, so a roof clean, a render wash or a drive clean is maintenance and nobody needs to be asked. The moment a clean turns into a recoat, a masonry paint or a coloured sealer, you have changed the appearance of the building, and that is a different conversation entirely.
So we price the two separately and never roll them into one figure called a restoration. Get the surface clean, look at it dry, and then decide whether it actually needs coating, because a good proportion of the render we wash here turns out to be perfectly sound underneath and wanted nothing but the green off.
If you do want it coated, check the property first, because a listed cottage or an unlisted building in a sensitive spot are not the same position. On the older cottages there is a second reason to go carefully: pressure on soft brick and lime mortar takes the joint out along with the algae, and repointing a wall costs many times what cleaning it does.
Who you are dealing with
The cleaning firm behind the quote
We work along the north-east edge of the Forest from Cadnam and Bartley through Copythorne and Netley Marsh, and out towards Lyndhurst and Minstead, 17.5 miles from our Boscombe base. The Park Authority is the planning body for all of it.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen, the owner, who comes out to look at each surface and prices the clean himself. A verified customer on Checkatrade gave a 10 out of 10 rating. The visit is free, as is the written quote with each surface set out on its own line. Before you book a visit in Cadnam and Bartley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Cadnam and Bartley?
Most repairs in Cadnam and Bartley 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 Cadnam and Bartley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Cadnam and Bartley. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Forest North 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 Cadnam and Bartley. 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 Cadnam and Bartley
How often does a forest edge house need cleaning?
Less often than the gutters do. Woodland and heath run straight up to the gardens at Cadnam and Bartley, so a shaded roof slope or north wall greens over sooner than one on an open estate, but a treatment left to work slows that right down. Most houses here want a wall or roof clean every few years, with the gutters cleared each autumn in between.
Bartley is in a conservation area. Does that affect a wash?
For a wash, no: the New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority and does scrutinise anything that changes how a building reads from outside, and Bartley lies within the Forest North East conservation area, with Cadnam village just outside it. Cleaning does not change how a building reads. There are 10 listed entries locally, and on one of those we keep to hand work and ask before applying anything that stays on the surface.
Can block paving be cleaned where the ground drains badly?
Yes, provided the slurry is handled properly. The ground here does not carry water away quickly, so flushing a drive into the borders leaves silt and a bog behind. We lift the growth, brush the mess off the surface into a heap and cart it away instead of washing it into the soil. Once the joints have dried the paving is re-sanded, which is what stops the blocks rocking under a car.
Do you need scaffold, or will a pole reach?
Around Copythorne a pole reaches nearly everything. Plenty of houses in Cadnam and Bartley are bungalows or detached on a good plot, so there is room to stand back and work off the ground with a water fed pole on gutters, fascias and render. Roof work goes off a ladder at the eaves or a light tower. Scaffold only goes up where the ground will not hold a tower safely.
What changes on the older cottages round here?
The pressure comes right down and the chemistry does more of the work. A fair share of the older houses at Cadnam and Bartley predate 1919, so soft brick, lime joints and old render are common enough that we assume them until we see otherwise. On those we hand wash, keep water off the wall head and leave a biocide to break the growth down slowly rather than blasting it away in an afternoon.
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Get a written price for your Cadnam and Bartley clean
Send the postcode and tell us what has gone green. We come out, look at each surface, and put the price in writing with the days it will take.