Exterior cleaning in Holt
Blocked gutters, mossy roofs, green walls and slippery paths around Holt and BH21. We look at the outbuildings too, 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.
Out at Holt the problem is rarely dirt. It is what grows on a building that stands under trees, and what falls on it from above. Both are dealt with by clearing properly and treating what is left, and neither is dealt with by turning the pressure up.
Most people ring us here after one of three things. Water has come over the front of a gutter in heavy rain and left a stain down the wall. The roof has gone dark on the shaded side and the moss is starting to shed into the guttering.
Or the paving and the paths have turned green and slippery and somebody has had a slide on them. We come and walk the whole property, including the outbuildings people forget to mention, get up and look inside the gutters rather than guessing from the drive, and put a written price together for the parts that need doing.
The work
Cleaning buildings that stand under trees
Gutters, valleys and outlets first. Around Holt the woodland and the heath start about where the gardens stop, and that decides the maintenance more than anything about the buildings themselves. Gutters fill with leaf litter and pine needles, valleys between roof slopes silt up out of sight, and outlets block at the top of the downpipe where you cannot see them. Clearing means the material comes out and goes with us rather than being flushed down the pipe to block it lower down, and then water goes through the whole run to prove it works. A valley that has stopped draining is what turns into a ruined ceiling.
A roof in permanent shade grows moss and lichen thickly and keeps it, whatever the covering is. Clay and slate hold it on the surface, concrete tile lets it root into the face. Either way it is scraped and cleared dry, the laps and the ridge are checked while somebody is up there, and then it gets a biocide treatment that carries on working for weeks after we leave. A pressure washer forces water up under the lap and takes the face off a concrete tile, and the moss comes back thicker on the rougher surface it leaves.
Render, pebbledash, painted masonry and older brickwork all end up with the same pattern out here: growth heaviest on the shaded elevation and a green band in the first foot or two above the ground where rain splashes back off gravel and beds. That is a soft wash at low pressure with the treatment doing the work, and soft old brick with lime joints gets no pressure at all.
Outbuildings, stores and garden walls. Stables, workshops, garages and the long boundary walls out here all green over on the north side and never get cleaned. They are cheap to include while the kit is already on site and make more difference from the lane than the house does.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Cleaning something needs no permission from anybody. Painting it, sealing it or re-coating it can be a different matter, because there are more than a dozen listed entries in and around Holt and a change of appearance on a listed building can need listed building consent from Dorset Council. We will tell you which side of that line your job falls on before we quote it.
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 cottage tucked under trees, a two storey house set well back off the lane and a run of outbuildings are three different reaches, and the last part is always carried by hand. 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. Holt is a short run for us, so we can usually look at it before you fix the date. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
Where the water and the residue end up here
In town, rinse water goes into a gully and disappears into a surface water sewer. Down the lanes around Holt there is usually no such thing. What comes off a roof or a drive runs to a ditch, a soakaway or straight into the ground, and a good many properties here are on private drainage as well, so a septic tank or a treatment plant may be somewhere under the lawn.
That is not a reason to avoid cleaning anything. It is a reason to plan it before the first hose is turned on rather than halfway through the afternoon.
What we do about it is simple enough. Planting near the wall is sheeted, gullies and drains are covered, run off is directed away from ditches and away from anything you tell us is sensitive, and the debris we scrape off a roof is bagged and leaves with us rather than being washed across the garden.
Products are used at the dilution stated on the label, which is the whole point of using an approved one, and the sensible steps are set out in plain pollution prevention guidance. When you ring, tell us where your soakaway or your tank is and where the ditch runs. It takes a minute and it saves an argument.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Holt, Furzehill, Three Legged Cross and the lanes around Wimborne across BH21. The survey takes in the outbuildings and the walls as well as the house, because that is usually where the work has been left longest.
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
Holt questions we get asked
The lane is narrow. Where will the van and kit go?
On the property if there is room, because standing on a Holt lane with no verge blocks it for everybody else. We travel with a tank and hose rather than a wide load, and the hose reaches a fair way from the vehicle, so we can often work the house from the gate. Where the run is too long we ask about an outside tap and a standing spot before the day rather than on it.
The valley between the two roofs keeps blocking. Why there?
Because a valley is where two slopes send everything they catch into one narrow channel. Around Holt that means leaf litter and heath debris rather than city grit. The channel fills, water backs up under the tiles either side, and a damp patch appears on a ceiling well away from the valley itself. Clearing it by hand and flushing the run is a separate job from washing the slopes and we price it separately.
You cannot flush it into the ditch here, can you?
No, and we do not. The ground around Holt holds water instead of taking it away, so anything washed off stays on the surface and finds the lowest point, which out here is a ditch or a field drain. Beds get sheeted, the downpipe gets a filter, and scraped moss is bagged and taken off site. What is left going onto a lawn is rinse water, not treated run off in a watercourse.
What else on the plot is worth doing at the same time?
Outbuildings, the garden walls, and any paving that gets walked on when it is wet. On plots around Holt the walls often carry more growth than the house, because they are shaded, they take splash off the ground and nobody ever looks at them. Doing them on one visit costs less in setting up than a second trip. Thomas Hannen lists each structure on its own line so you can drop any of them.
Does the Green Belt or a listing stop us cleaning?
Neither one does. Green Belt status is about putting up something new, an extension or an outbuilding, and has nothing to say about washing what is already standing. There is no conservation area covering the village, and the 13 listed entries in the parish are a small share of the properties here. If yours is one of them, the constraint falls on method and materials, not on whether the work can happen.
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Get the gutters and the roof looked at before winter
A free visit, the whole property surveyed and an itemised written quote. Holt, Furzehill and the BH21 lanes.