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.
Last updated
Exterior cleaning at Holton Heath usually means the drive. Block paving that has lost its jointing sand goes green, grows weeds and starts to rock underfoot, and it is cleaned and re-sanded, not lifted and relaid. That is a day's work, not a rebuild.
Around Holton Heath the paving usually goes first, then the roof. 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. 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 in Holton Heath 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, not 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. Needles land here as much as leaves, and they block an outlet fast, so gutter clearing is worth a visit of its own. 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
Soft washing render, roofs and drives, from survey to rinse
Thomas comes out and walks round the whole outside with you, looking at the render, the roof tiles, the fascias, the drive and the patio. On the eighties houses and bungalows in Holton Heath the usual growth is green algae on the north side, moss on concrete roof tiles and weeds in block paving.
Each surface gets its own method and its own line on the quote, along with protecting plants and windows, how we reach it, and where the rinse water goes.
Every visit follows the same routine. Plants, windows and vents are covered before a biocide goes on, and render is soft washed at low pressure, never blasted. Moss and algae treatments are regulated products, and the biocides regime the HSE administers covers what can be used. Run off is kept off lawns and out of drains where possible, and the ground is rinsed and left clean. Cracked render or a loose tile that only shows once it is clean gets a photo and a price, and waits for your go-ahead.
Cleaning needs no permission. Painting or coating a surface can be different, though the few listed entries near Holton Heath sit away from the modern housing. On a listed building, a change of appearance can need listed building consent from Dorset Council, and we would tell you before quoting.
Cost
Growth, height and run-off: what a clean costs to do
No rate per square metre, because the same patch of wall can take twenty minutes or two hours depending on what is growing on it.
Reach. A bungalow is mostly cleaned from the ground with a lance or a pole. A two storey semi needs a tower for the gable, and a roof slope needs a platform, which the work at height rules decide. A detached garage block is its own job.
Getting the kit in. A drive we can park the van and water tank on is quicker than a back garden behind a side gate, where hoses run through and everything is carried.
What is growing. A light green film on render washes off. Black lichen and moss that has rooted into concrete tiles needs a biocide, time to work and sometimes a second visit to finish.
The surface. Render, block paving, painted fascias and roof tiles each take a different pressure and product. Paving usually needs re-sanding afterwards, and that is a line of its own.
Ask any other quote what method they use on each surface, whether a treatment is included or only a rinse, whether a second visit is part of the price, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A sale, a survey or a scaffold coming down
Cleaning is never an emergency, but it is often tied to a date: the house going on the market, a survey, or a scaffold about to come down. Phone and tell us the date.
We will be honest about whether it can be done properly by then, because a biocide on algae needs dry weather and time to work. The first visit agrees how each surface will be cleaned and in what order. If time is short, the render might be washed now and the roof treated later. Booked jobs run Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Should we miss you, we will call back once we are free.
The one local thing
Houses of the same age tend to wear out together
Holton Heath is mostly post-war housing: about four in ten homes date from 1945 to 1982 and over a third from 1983 to 2008. Houses built in the same few years tend to come to the same point together. Where the concrete tiles on a road share an age, the moss arrives on your roof at about the same time as your neighbour's.
Block paving laid at the same time tends to lose its jointing sand at the same time, so neighbouring drives often want re-sanding together. Fascias and downpipes of the same vintage go chalky together as well. It is not a sign that anything has been neglected. It is what an outside surface does after decades of weather.
In practice that affects how you price the work and how you read a quote. 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.
Similar houses on the same road 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
Who cleans the outside of your house
We come from Boscombe, 10.7 miles from Holton Heath, and clean across the village, Sandford, Upton, Lytchett Matravers and Wareham in BH16. Dorset Council covers Holton Heath. The visit looks at the whole outside, and the quote splits the price surface by surface.
You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. You will meet Thomas Hannen, who owns it, on the walk round, and he prices it there and then. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10. Visiting and quoting in writing are both free of charge. Before you book a visit in Holton Heath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Holton Heath?
Most repairs in Holton Heath 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 Holton Heath |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Holton Heath. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Holton Heath, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Holton Heath. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Holton Heath. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Holton Heath
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 homes and new overnight accommodation rather than to cleaning, but the run off still has to be handled.
The house is 1980s. Is that render safe to wash?
Usually: much of the housing here is from the eighties onwards, and 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, never lance, so you are not left with a patchy colour.
The heath behind us drops everything on the roof. Any answer?
Treat the roof, and keep an eye on the gutters. Heather, pine needles and birch seed off the heath settle in the laps of a Holton Heath roof and hold damp where moss roots, so a dry scrape and a biocide left to work does more good than a wash. The same fine material packs the outlets, and gutter clearing each autumn keeps it moving.
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. Gutters are different and autumn suits them, once the trees around the heath have finished dropping.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Holton Heath
Nearby places we also cover for exterior cleaning, with straight-line distances from Holton Heath, and the other trades we offer in Holton Heath itself.
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Holton Heath
Exterior cleaning guides
Soft washing vs pressure washing: safe for a roof? How to clean a patio without damaging it Moss on a roof: does it need removing?Everything we do in Wareham Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
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.