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.
In a river town the honest answer is that surfaces in Fordingbridge stay damp longer than they do a few miles up the hill, so growth comes back faster and the treatment matters more than the wash. Getting it off is easy. Keeping it off is what you are actually paying for.
Most calls out of Fordingbridge are one of three. 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. Nearly a fifth of the housing here 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 rather than 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 the town, 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. Clearing is by vacuum or by hand, the outlets are rodded, the joints checked, and the valleys between roof planes cleared first because they are what put water inside the building. We photograph the inside before and after.
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 is not most weeks of the year.
Terraces and town centre frontages. A good part of the older stock 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
From your call to a written price
No conservation area covers Fordingbridge, though the parish carries getting on for fifty listed entries, most of them in the older streets by the bridge. Cleaning is maintenance either way and needs no application. Consent only comes into it if you go further afterwards and coat, seal or paint a surface that has not been treated that way before, and on a listed building that is a conversation to have first. Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where maintaining a wall becomes altering one.
The quote is itemised: the method for each surface, protection, access and where the water and residue go, each on its own line.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre: the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two, depending what is growing on it. A High Street frontage with no side access, a semi with a drive down one flank and a bungalow with a conservatory across the back are three different jobs before a hose is unrolled. Some of it wants a tower rather than a pole, and work at height rules decide which.
Comparing quotes. Ask what method each surface gets, whether treatment is included or only a rinse, whether a second visit is part of it, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. It is not emergency work, but it usually has a date on it: a sale, an inspection, scaffolding coming down. Tell us the date and we will say honestly if it can be done properly. In this river valley a biocide needs weeks of weather behind it, even when the wash can be booked quickly. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
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
A local firm you can check
Fordingbridge, Sandleheath, Alderholt, Breamore and the SP6 villages up and down the Avon valley, worked from our base south of the Forest. 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
Fordingbridge questions we get asked
Why do the gutters here fill up again by autumn?
Because you are on the edge of the New Forest and the leaf comes down on the roof before it comes down on the lawn. Needles and small twigs pack the outlet first, then the valley, and the gutter tips down the wall instead of into the downpipe. On a house near the river we clear by hand into a bag, flush the run, and check the fall so it drains rather than sits.
Fordingbridge has no conservation area. Does that make it simpler?
For cleaning, yes, up to a point. No area designation sits over the town, so washing ordinary render or tile is maintenance 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 the town 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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Find out what will come up and what will not
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.