Exterior cleaning in Corfe Mullen
Roof moss, blocked gutters, green pebbledash and tired block paving cleaned across Corfe Mullen, mostly without a platform on the drive.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
On a Corfe Mullen bungalow most of this is done from the ground. The roofs are low and long, the gutters are within reach of a pole, and a concrete tile that has gone green wants a dry scrape and a biocide rather than a jet wash. No tower on the drive for a week, and usually a day on site.
Three jobs make up most of what we do in the village. A roof slope that has gone properly green, normally the one that faces away from the sun and never dries out. Gutters and downpipes that have quietly filled with moss dropping off that same roof, which is what causes the stain running down the render below the joint. And a block paved drive that has weed in every joint, black spot on the surface and has gone slippery where the cars drip.
You rarely need all of it doing at once, and we would rather tell you which one is actually costing you money. Gutters first, almost always. The site visit is free, the written quote is itemised so you can see each surface priced on its own, and if the answer is that the drive can wait another two years, that is what you will be told.
The work
Bungalow roofs, estate drives and everything in between
Roof cleaning, from the ground where we can. A third of the homes here are bungalows, which changes this job more than people expect. The roof is the largest single surface on the house and it is also the lowest, so a great deal of it is reachable on a pole from the drive instead of off a platform. Moss comes off dry with a scrape and a brush, worked down the slope so nothing is driven up under the laps, the ridge and the valleys are cleared out, and then a biocide goes on so regrowth is slow. Sixty-two per cent of the village was built between 1945 and 1982 and a third of it in the 1970s and early 1980s, so the tile is mostly concrete interlocking of one age, and a jet wash strips the surface off that tile and leaves it quicker to green up than it was before.
Gutters are the job we would do first on nearly every house in Corfe Mullen. All that roof moss ends up in them, and the blockage is almost always at the outlet where the downpipe starts rather than along the run. Once that is packed, water goes over the front edge and down the wall, and you get the green streak on the render that half the calls here start with. We clear the runs, the outlets and the valleys, flush them through and check the fall, and the debris leaves with us.
Plenty of pebbledash and painted render on the older closes, brickwork on the later ones. It is soft wash work: low pressure through a wide nozzle, a treatment left to do the job, then a rinse. Pebbledash in particular hates a lance, because the stones are only held in a thin bed of mortar and force takes them off in patches you will look at for years. A lot of the block paving here went down in the eighties and nineties and is now at the stage where it wants a wash, the weed out and a re-sand rather than relaying. Kiln dried sand back in the joints is what keeps the blocks locked together. Planting against the wall is wetted and sheeted first, and every drain the water will reach is covered and checked.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
You get the method for each surface, the protection, the access and the disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's. Thomas Hannen prices the job himself and the visit costs nothing. Nothing is left open or unusable overnight, and what comes out leaves with us. Nothing about cleaning needs permission. There is no conservation area over Corfe Mullen and a single listed entry in the whole village, so what you do to the outside afterwards is largely your own choice, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that line falls. Dorset Council is the authority, and we check the address anyway before quoting.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
There is no square metre rate on this work. What is growing on a surface decides the time, not its size. A detached bungalow with a drive you can park a van on, a chalet bungalow with dormers in the roof, and a semi on one of the closes with nowhere to pull in are three different jobs, and work at height rules settle whether a pole does it. Ageing concrete tile, pebbledash and eighties block paving each take their own pressure. Comparing quotes, ask the method per surface, whether treatment is included, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Phone rather than fill in the form. We are about seven miles away, so getting out to look before you fix a date is straightforward. If the deadline is a sale or a survey, say so, because clearing the gutters and washing the elevation the photographs will show is a different plan from doing the whole house properly. Anything outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, we arrange.
Worth knowing
The whole village greens over at the same time
Most of Corfe Mullen went up in one long run between the war and the early eighties, with the busiest years in the seventies. That means the roofs on a close went on within a season or two of each other, the drives were laid at the same time, and the render was finished the same way by the same firms.
So they do not wear out one at a time. They arrive at the same state together, which is why the moss on your roof looks exactly like the moss on the three houses either side, and why a whole street can suddenly seem to need doing at once.
Two useful things follow from that. The first is practical: if neighbours are in the same position, ask us to look at two or three houses in one visit. Setting up, getting the kit out and getting the waste away happens once instead of three times, and that shows in the quote rather than in a discount we made up. The second is a warning.
Where an entire estate reaches the same age, someone will always turn a cleaning job into a bigger sale, usually a sprayed coating over the tiles once the roof has been cleaned. A concrete tile that has gone green is not a failed roof. Clean it, treat it, keep the gutters clear and look at it again in a few years, and if a tile is genuinely spalling or a ridge is loose, that is a repair to price on its own merits rather than a reason to coat the lot.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Corfe Mullen and the BH21 postcodes across to Broadstone, Merley, Wimborne Minster, Lytchett Matravers and Upton. 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
Corfe Mullen questions we get asked
Is there any heritage rule to worry about in Corfe Mullen?
Barely one. The settlement has no conservation area and a single listed entry in the whole of it, so for almost every house here washing, and even coating afterwards, is your decision rather than something Dorset Council holds a view on. That is unusual on this patch. It also means we can talk about what genuinely suits the covering instead of what happens to be permitted.
Most of the road is bungalows. How do you reach the roof?
Off a ladder at the eaves, or a light tower where the ground is level. 33.6% of Corfe Mullen is single storey, which puts the gutter line low enough to work from the ground and keeps scaffold out of most jobs. The catch is how much covering there is per house. Low does not mean small, and there is a lot of hip and verge to travel along at that height.
Why do the tile edges look worse than the middle?
Because the edges hold the mortar and that is where weather does its work. 62.1% of Corfe Mullen went up between 1945 and 1982, with a third of the settlement from the 1970s and early 1980s at 34.5%, so verge and ridge bedding round here arrived at the same stage together. Washing loose bedding is how a clean turns into a repair, so we look first and say what wants pointing.
The heath drops debris into our valley gutter. What then?
Valleys and flat roof outlets want clearing more often than the eaves gutter, and they are the ones that leak when they pack up. With heath and woodland close by there is a constant drift of fine litter that beds down in the valley and holds water against the tile edges. We clear it, flush it through and then check the outlet, rather than assuming the water is getting away.
Can you do the drive and patio without touching the house?
Yes, and a fair few people do exactly that. The ground at Corfe Mullen holds water, so we take the mess off with a brush and a vacuum instead of flushing it into the lawn, then refill the joints once the surface has dried out. The written quote is itemised, so the drive, the path and the patio are separate lines and you can do one of them this year.
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Get a written price for your Corfe Mullen clean
Send the postcode and tell us what needs doing. We come out, look at the roof, the gutters and the paving, and put the price in writing.