Exterior cleaning in Furzehill
Roof moss, green render, blocked gutters and slippery paving across Furzehill and BH21. We look at the whole outside and put a written price in front of you.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Almost everything that makes a Furzehill house look tired from the lane is living: moss on the north slope, algae on the render, a green film on the paving. It comes off with the right treatment and patience, not with pressure, and a firm that reaches for a lance first will cost you a surface.
People ring us here for three reasons. The roof has gone green on one side and the moss is starting to drop into the gutter. The gutters have stopped coping and water is running down the wall by the front door. Or the drive and the patio have turned slippery underfoot and nobody fancies the walk to the bins in the wet.
We come and look at all of it, not just the bit you rang about, because the same visit that cleans a roof is the visit that should clear the valley and check the downpipe runs. You get a written price for what needs doing and an honest word about what does not.
The work
What we get called to on Furzehill roofs and walls
Roof cleaning, mostly on concrete tile. Nearly half the houses out here went up between the war and the early eighties, and what came with them was concrete interlocking tile. It holds moss better than anything else on a roof: the face is slightly open, a north slope never really dries, and the moss roots into the surface rather than sitting on it. A roof clean is a dry scrape to take the bulk off, then clearing what has washed down into the laps and the valley, then a biocide treatment that keeps working for weeks after we have gone. A lance on those tiles strips the cement face off, exposes the aggregate underneath, and the regrowth comes back faster because the surface is rougher than it was.
A quarter of the housing here is single storey, and a bungalow has one long unbroken gutter run with a hedge or a field tree leaning over most of it. Clearing is by hand or by vacuum from the ground, and it is not finished until somebody has put water down it and watched the outlet and the downpipe take it. Half the wet walls we are shown in Furzehill are a gutter joint, a blocked outlet or a downpipe discharging into nothing rather than anything wrong with the roof.
The seventies stock is mostly pebbledash or painted render, and it goes two ways: black spot algae in hard little dots on the sunnier walls, and a green wash of algae and lichen on the north and east elevations, worst in the first foot or so where rain splashes back off the ground. That is a soft wash at low pressure with a treatment doing the work. Pebbledash and a jet wash is the most expensive mistake on this list, because the stones come off with the dirt and there is no putting them back.
Drives and paths here are block paving, concrete slabs and tarmac. Block paving gets a wash and then a re-sand with kiln dried sand, because sweeping the joints out and leaving them empty is how the blocks start to move. Slabs and tarmac want a wider fan nozzle and less force than most people expect.
Old brick, where we say no to pressure. There are listed farmhouses and cottages around Furzehill, Wilksworth Farmhouse among them, and older brickwork in the garden walls and outbuildings besides. Soft handmade brick and lime mortar cannot take a pressure wash. It takes the face off the brick and the mortar straight out of the joint, and the wall then holds more water than it did before.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Cleaning is maintenance and needs nobody's permission. Painting, sealing or re-coating a wall is a different question if the building is listed, and there are listed entries in and around Furzehill, so that can need listed building consent from Dorset Council before the look of it changes. We will say so before we quote, not after.
The quote is itemised: the method for each surface, protection, access and where the water and residue go, each on its own line. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
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 bungalow roof and its gutters come off a reach pole, a two storey detached wants a longer pole or a tower, and an outbuilding down a track means carrying everything to it. Ground level off a lance is one thing, a roof slope another, 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. We are close enough to Furzehill to look early in the week and tell you whether the date is realistic. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
Everything the trees drop lands on your roof first
Furzehill sits with woodland, hedgerow and heath on its doorstep, and that decides how often you need us rather than whether you need us. Leaf litter, pine needles and seed all end up in the same three places: the gutter, the valley and any flat roof over a porch or a garage.
Wet debris sitting in a gutter is what keeps the fascia behind it damp, and a valley that has silted up is what pushes water sideways under the tiles instead of down the roof. Somebody who tells you a gutter clean is a once in a decade job has not looked at the trees over your house.
In practice that changes two things about how you buy this work. The roof clean and the gutter clearing want to be the same visit, because the access is most of what you are paying for and doing them separately means paying to get up there twice.
And the house on the tree side of a lane needs looking at more often than the one opposite, so a maintenance interval somebody quotes you off a spreadsheet is meaningless until they have stood in your garden and looked at what is overhanging the roof. When we come, we set up the same way every time: planting sheeted, gullies and drains covered, and the scraped moss bagged and taken away rather than washed into the borders.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We are a Wimborne and Colehill area firm and Furzehill is close work for us, along with Holt, Three Legged Cross and most of BH21. Every visit starts with a survey of the whole outside, not just the surface you rang about.
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
Furzehill questions we get asked
Our drive is on wet ground and never dries. Will cleaning help?
It will clean it, but the ground is why it goes green again. Furzehill sits on impeded drainage, so surface water lingers under the blocks instead of soaking away and the joints stay damp for weeks after rain. A wash plus a biocide gets you a good deal further than a wash on its own. If water stands in the same two places every time, the fall or the sub base is the fix and we will say so.
Do we need anything from Dorset Council to clean the house?
No. Furzehill has no conservation area of its own and there are only 14 listed entries in the area, Wilksworth Farmhouse among them, so for almost everyone here washing render, tile or block paving is maintenance and the council has no interest in it. The Green Belt line around the village governs putting up new building, not the state of what is already standing. If yours is the listed one, the method changes, not the paperwork.
The garage flat roof is packed with needles. Does that matter?
It matters more than the house roof does. Woodland close to Furzehill drops needles and fine debris most of the year, and a flat roof has nothing to shed them, so they lie in a wet mat over the outlet and rot the covering underneath. We brush and bag rather than flush, because that spoil is grit and organic sludge you do not want washing into a soakaway on ground that already drains badly.
Is the concrete tile on a 1970s house safe to soft wash?
Yes on most of them, with a look first. Nearly half the stock here, 46.8%, went up between 1945 and 1982, and the interlocking concrete tile of that period loses its surface as it ages. Soft washing does not strip it further; a lance would. Where a tile is already spalling and shedding grit into the gutter, cleaning makes the roof look worse rather than better, and we tell you that on the visit.
Can you reach the back without coming through the house?
Usually. Bungalows make up 25.5% of the dwellings here and most of the rest are detached, so there is a side gate rather than a shared alley. We work off a pole from the ground where we can and bring a tower only where height or pitch forces it. What slows us is a narrow side passage with bins and a fence panel in it, so clearing that keeps our kit out of your hallway.
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