Exterior cleaning at Holton Heath
Green block paving, mossy roofs, blocked gutters and tired render at Holton Heath and BH16. One visit, the whole outside looked at, a written price.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
The drive is usually the job at Holton Heath. Block paving that has lost its jointing sand goes green, grows weeds and starts to rock underfoot, and it is cleaned and re-sanded rather than lifted and relaid. That is a day's work, not a rebuild.
People here ring about one of three things. The paving has gone dark and slippery and the weeds are back before spring is out. The roof has gone mossy on the shaded pitch and the guttering is filling up with what falls off it.
Or the render and the plastic fascias have gone green on one side of the house and made the whole place look neglected. We come out and look at all of it in one visit, tell you what is worth doing now and what will wait a year, and put the price in writing with each surface on its own line.
The work
The surfaces we clean at Holton Heath
Block paving drives, most of what we do here. The estate drives around Holton Heath are block paving of a certain age, and the failure is always the same: the kiln dried sand has gone out of the joints, so water sits, moss and weed take hold and the blocks start to move under a car. The job is a controlled wash with a wide fan nozzle, weed and root removal from the joints, a treatment so it does not green over again by summer, and then a full re-sand. Too much force cuts the block faces and blows the joints out to the sub base.
The pitched roofs here are concrete interlocking tile, reaching the age where moss is rooted into the face rather than sitting on it. A roof clean is a dry scrape, then clearing the laps and the valley of everything that has washed down, then a biocide left to keep working after we have gone. A lance drives water back up under the lap, strips the cement face off the tile and takes the mortar out of a bedded ridge.
Painted render and masonry get a soft wash at low pressure with an approved treatment doing the work rather than the water. The uPVC fascias, soffits and downpipes of this stock go green and chalky, and they clean up with a soft wash and a brush at the same time as the gutter.
Heath and pine change the gutter work. Gutters here take needles as much as leaves, and needles are what block an outlet. Clearing means the debris comes out and leaves with us, then water goes through the run to prove the downpipe takes it. Winter growth on a north facing path is a genuine hazard and it lifts with the right nozzle and a treatment, without the etching a hard jet wash leaves in a slab.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
You do not need permission to clean anything. Painting or coating a surface can be a different matter, though the five listed entries near Holton Heath sit away from the modern housing, so it rarely bites here. Where a building is listed, a change of appearance can need listed building consent from Dorset Council, and we would say so before quoting rather than afterwards.
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, a two storey semi and a detached garage block are three different reaches, and a drive you can get the van and the tank onto is quicker than one behind a side gate. 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. Holton Heath is a short run off the Wareham road, so we can normally look 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
The whole street was built at once, and it is wearing out together
Most of Holton Heath went up in the same building boom, a lot of it during the eighties. That is why the outsides here come to the same point at the same time. The concrete tiles are all the same age, so the moss arrives on your roof at about the same time as your neighbour's.
The block paving went down in the same few years, so the jointing sand is running out along the whole street. The fascias and downpipes are the same vintage plastic and they have all gone chalky together. It is not a sign that anything has been neglected. It is what a surface built in one go does after four decades of weather.
Two practical things follow. First, price the outside as one job rather than three, because the roof, the paving and the rainwater goods will all want attention inside the same couple of years and the setting up is a big part of the cost each time. Second, be careful what you conclude from a neighbour's quote.
Identical houses on this estate can still be a day apart depending on which way the shaded elevation faces, how much pine is over the roof and whether the drive has been sealed at some point in the past. We would rather come and look at yours than price it off theirs.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We work across Holton Heath, Sandford, Upton, Lytchett Matravers and Wareham, so BH16 and the villages either side of it are ordinary ground for us. Every visit is a survey of the whole outside, with the price broken down surface by surface.
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
Holton Heath questions we get asked
Our patio is slimy again within months. Is that normal here?
On this ground it is. Holton Heath sits on land that is naturally wet, with water close to the surface, and paving bedded over it never really dries out between spells of rain. Algae needs nothing more than damp and a bit of shade. A wash on its own buys you a season. A wash followed by a biocide, put on dry and left to work, gets you a good way into the next year.
Does anything you wash off end up in Poole Harbour?
Not if the job is set up properly. Everything on this side of Wareham drains towards Poole Harbour, so we keep washings out of surface water drains and ditches, filter at the downpipe, and take scraped moss and silt away in bags. Biocide goes onto the surface, not down a gully. The nutrient rules people hear about apply to new bedrooms rather than to cleaning, but the run off still has to be handled.
The house is 1980s. Is that render safe to wash?
Usually, and that covers most of the properties here, because 36.4% of dwellings went up between 1983 and 2008 with the peak in the 1980s. That period is largely cement render or dry dash on blockwork, which takes a wash better than lime does, but the paint over it is often original and chalky by now. We test a patch, then soft wash rather than lance, so you are not left with a patchy colour.
The heath behind us drops everything on the roof. Any answer?
Guards help on a straight run and cause trouble on a valley, so we look before recommending them. Heather, pine needles and birch seed off the heath are fine material. They pass straight through a leaf guard and pack solid in the outlet underneath where you cannot see them. On the bungalows here, 28.0% of the stock, the gutter is low enough to check from a step, so two looks a year beats a fitted guard.
Is there a point in the year you would not do this?
Frost. A biocide wants a couple of dry days either side to stay where it is put, and a hard frost the night after a wash lifts the face off older paving. The south west elevation takes the driven rain here, so that wall is the one worth saving for a settled spell rather than a wet week. Gutters are different and autumn suits them, once the trees around the heath have finished dropping.
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Get the drive and the roof priced in one visit
A free site visit, every surface surveyed and an itemised written quote. Holton Heath, Sandford, Upton and Wareham.