Exterior cleaning in Fordingbridge
Roof cleaning, render and masonry soft washing, gutters cleared and paving brought back across Fordingbridge and the Avon valley. Priced surface by surface.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Exterior cleaning in Fordingbridge is a river town job. Surfaces here stay damp longer than they do a few miles up the hill, so growth comes back faster and the treatment behind a soft wash matters more than the wash itself. Getting it off is easy. Keeping it off is what you are actually paying for.
Cleaning in Fordingbridge usually starts from a short list of problems. A wall in the older part of town has gone dark and streaked and nobody wants to put a lance anywhere near old brick. A roof on one of the estates has moss across a whole slope and looks a decade older than the house. Or a patio and a path by the water are slippery from the first autumn gale to the spring.
We come and survey it surface by surface, because a painted render frontage, a concrete tile roof and a block paved drive want three different methods and two of them want almost no pressure. You are told what will come up, what needs treating and then leaving to work, and what we would not touch. The site visit is free and the written price has each surface on its own line.
The work
Cleaning in a town built along the Avon
The old centre needs the gentlest method. Nearly a fifth of the housing in Fordingbridge predates the First World War, and the streets around the bridge and the market are soft brick with lime mortar joints, colourwashed render and the occasional later pebbledash. None of it belongs anywhere near a jet wash.
It is soft washed with a weak solution, given time to work and rinsed at low pressure, and where the pointing has already failed we tell you to get the mortar sorted before the wall is cleaned, not after. On an old solid wall an open joint takes water inside whether it arrives off a hose or off the weather.
Estate roofs from the 1970s and early 1980s are the biggest single slice of Fordingbridge, which means concrete interlocking tile now porous enough to hold moss like a pad. The growth is scraped off dry, the tile is soft washed at low pressure and treated with a biocide so the spores left in the surface do not bring the regrowth straight back. Nothing is forced up under the lap, because that puts water onto the felt instead of into the gutter. Ridge and verge get looked at while we are there, since a rocking ridge is a repair to do before a clean, not after.
The mature trees along the Avon and through the older gardens fill gutters, downpipes and valleys properly, so gutter clearing is worth booking with a roof clean.
Block paving, brick paths, slabs and concrete are where a pressure wash and a rotary nozzle earn their money. Block paving is re-sanded afterwards, since the wash lifts the jointing sand out along with the weed, and sealing is a separate decision that only works on genuinely dry paving, which beside the river means waiting for a settled dry spell.
Terraces and town centre frontages. A good part of the older stock in Fordingbridge has no side access at all, so everything comes through the house or over a wall, and the water has to be caught rather than allowed to run down the pavement. That changes the method more than it changes the surface. Everything we spray is a biocide sold for the job and used to its label, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires.
How it runs
Soft washing and pressure washing, surface by surface
Thomas walks round with you and looks at each surface you want cleaned: the render, the brick, the roof, the paths and the drive. Each gets its own method, because a soft wash with a biocide suits render and roof tiles, while a pressure wash suits block paving and concrete.
The written quote sets out the method for each surface, how plants and windows are protected, the access, and how the water and residue are dealt with.
On an estate house with a drive, we can park and set up without fuss. A frontage on the High Street with no side access, or a house with a conservatory across the back, takes more care and more sheeting. Plants are soaked or covered first, gullies are protected, and the run off is contained in line with pollution prevention guidance. Cracked render or loose pointing that shows up once the dirt is off is photographed and priced, and left alone unless you want it done.
Cleaning is maintenance and needs no application anywhere in Fordingbridge, including the conservation area over the town centre. Consent only comes into it if you go on to coat, seal or paint a surface that has not been treated that way before, and on one of the listed buildings in the older streets that is a conversation to have first. Where maintenance turns into alteration is explained in the Planning Portal page on external walls.
Cost
What is growing and how high it is: the cost of a clean
A clean is not priced by the square metre. The same patch of wall can take a few minutes or most of a morning, depending on the growth and the height.
What is growing there. Green algae on render lifts with a soft wash and a biocide. Black lichen on tiles and thick moss on a north facing roof need longer, and often a second application. In the damp of the river valley, shaded walls green over again sooner.
The surface. Render, brick, roof tiles, block paving and timber decking each need their own pressure and chemical. The wrong one strips render or scars brick faces.
Reaching it. A bungalow can be done from the ground with a pole. A two or three storey house, or a roof, may need a tower, and work at height rules decide which. A High Street frontage with no side access means carrying everything through, and a conservatory across the back needs covering.
After-care. Block paving is re-sanded once it is washed. A biocide carries on working for weeks, and a follow-up visit may be built in.
Before you pick a quote, check how each surface will be cleaned, whether a biocide is part of it or just water, whether a return visit is included, and what happens to the dirty run off.
If there is a date
A sale, a viewing or a scaffold coming down
Cleaning is seldom urgent, but it often has a deadline: the house is about to go on the market, a buyer is coming round, an inspection is booked, or the scaffold is due down. Phone us with the date, and we will be straight with you about whether it can be done properly by then.
The wash itself is quick, but a biocide on render or a roof needs dry weather and time to work, and in the river valley that can take a while, so allow for it. The first visit covers every surface and the plan for each. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Missed calls get returned as soon as we can manage.
One local thing
Where the water and the residue end up
Fordingbridge drains to the Avon, and it does not take long to get there. The road gullies, the surface water drains and half the garden ditches in the town run to a river that is protected along its whole length, and the water meadows either side of it flood as designed.
That is why we plan the run off before anything is switched on rather than working it out when a drive starts sheeting down the road. Planting gets sheeted or soaked first so nothing lands on dry leaves, gullies and drains near the work are covered or bunded, and the residue is contained and taken away rather than chased into the nearest grid.
We follow pollution prevention guidance on that, and Approved Document H is the reason surface water and foul drainage are kept apart in the first place. Cleaning outside is a licensed activity in nobody's book, but putting biocide into a chalk river is a different matter entirely.
What that should change for you is the question you ask when you are comparing prices. Ask where the water is going. Anyone who has not thought about it on a property this close to the Avon has not walked the site properly, and the cheapest quote is usually cheap because containment and disposal are not in it.
The same question matters on your own account: a patio soaked in a strong solution that runs straight into a ditch takes the pond life with it. On riverside plots we will often work drier and slower, with less product and more dwell time, and tell you honestly that it will take an extra visit. That is a better trade than a fast clean you have to explain to a neighbour.
Who you are dealing with
Who cleans your walls, roof and paths
Our base in Boscombe, south of the Forest, is 14.1 miles from Fordingbridge. Our cleaning covers the town plus Sandleheath, Alderholt, Breamore and the villages up and down the river, and the town's council is New Forest District Council.
The company behind the work is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The owner is Thomas Hannen, and he comes out himself to see the surfaces and price the clean. Checkatrade lists a verified customer's 10 out of 10 for us. The visit costs nothing and neither does the written itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Fordingbridge, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Fordingbridge?
Most repairs in Fordingbridge 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 Fordingbridge |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Fordingbridge. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Fordingbridge Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Fordingbridge. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Fordingbridge. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Fordingbridge
Why does render here go green again so fast?
Because Fordingbridge sits in the river valley on the edge of the New Forest, and damp air and tree cover keep a wall wet for days after rain. Algae needs damp more than it needs dirt. A soft wash on its own looks good for a season, and with a biocide left to work it lasts far longer. Near the river we also keep the rinse water off ground that runs to the Avon.
Fordingbridge has a conservation area. Does that affect cleaning?
For cleaning, very little: the Fordingbridge Conservation Area covers the town centre, but washing ordinary render or tile is maintenance inside it or out, and nobody needs asking. What does matter is the 49 listed entries scattered through the parish, the Old Manor House and the road bridge over the river among them. If your wall is part of one of those, or attached to it, the method has to suit the fabric and we agree it first.
Will a wash lift the paint off a 1970s render?
It can, which is why we test a square out of sight before anything else happens. Most of Fordingbridge is post-war stock, 41.2% of it put up between 1945 and 1982, and that render has usually been painted more than once since. Old masonry paint on a rough face lets go in sheets under a jet. We soft wash instead, so the coating stays put and the growth dies back over the following weeks.
Is there a bad time of year to book this here?
Winter is not the problem, the Forest is. Leaf fall runs from October into December and there is no sense clearing gutters in the middle of it, so we either come before it starts or wait until the trees are bare. Render and paving are the other way round. A biocide wants a dry spell either side of the visit so it stays on the surface long enough to do the work.
Ours is a converted flat. Who has to instruct the work?
Whoever owns the outside, which in a converted flat is rarely the person living in it. Around 17.1% of dwellings here are flats, and most of those are older houses split up, where the roof, the gutters and the render belong to the freeholder and come out of the service charge. Thomas Hannen will still come and look. The written itemised quote goes to whoever is instructing, so an agent has something to work from.
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A free site visit in Fordingbridge, then a written itemised price with every surface on its own line. Tell us if there is a date to work to.