Exterior cleaning in Longham
Roof cleaning, render and cladding soft washing, block paving and gutter clearing across Longham, Ferndown and West Parley.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
No scaffold goes into the price of a Longham job, because nearly all of it is single storey. On a bungalow we reach the whole roof, the gutters and the fascias off a pole from the ground, and the work is usually done in a day.
The calls come in three shapes. The roof has gone green and it is now visible from the road. The block paved drive is black, and the bit under the car is a different colour from the bit that is not. Or the gutters are overflowing at the back where the willows and alders along the Stour have filled them.
We survey the lot on a free site visit, price each surface on its own line, and tell you plainly if one of them is not worth doing yet. Nothing here needs a scaffold tower on a normal bungalow, and we will say so rather than quote for one.
The work
Bungalow roofs, big drives and long gutter runs
Bungalow roofs. Nearly everything around here is concrete interlocking tile on a shallow pitch, and more than a third of the dwellings are bungalows, which carry roughly twice the roof area of a two storey house with the same floor space. That is a lot of surface for moss to sit on. We scrape the growth out of the laps and off the ridge, clear the gutter and the valley where two ranges meet, then put a biocide over the whole slope. Reach poles from the ground do most of Longham, so a roof clean here is a day rather than a week with a platform.
Painted render, dry dash and the uPVC or timber effect cladding that went on a lot of these houses in the eighties all come up on a low pressure soft wash with a treatment behind it. Pebbledash in particular is a trap: a lance will take the pebbles off in stripes and you will never match the patch. Brickwork, masonry plinths and a painted rendered gable get the same low pressure approach.
Plots here are wide and the driveways are large, mostly block paving, concrete or tarmac with a patio round the back. Block paving is jet washed and then re-sanded, because the kiln dried sand in the joints is what stops the blocks rocking and the weeds returning. We will seal a driveway afterwards if you want it sealed, though not the same day and not if the sub base is still holding water. Oil under where the car sits is a separate treatment and does not always come out completely.
Low eaves mean gutter clearing here is quick, and it is the single most useful thing most people can have done. We clear the gutter and the outlet, flush the downpipe, check it actually reaches a drain, and wash the fascia, the soffit and the conservatory roof while the pole is up.
Before the water runs. Planting is watered and sheeted, the gully by the garage and any open drain gets covered, and vents and outside lights are protected. A biocide is used at the dilution on the label, only on surfaces it is approved for, and it does not go into a drain, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers and pollution prevention guidance require. We would talk you out of an annual contract, when a treated roof around here should hold two or three years.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
There is no conservation area over Longham and only a handful of listed entries nearby, so on almost every house here washing is straightforward maintenance and needs nobody's permission. The exception is a listed building, where cleaning is fine but changing a finish, sealing it or painting it can need listed building consent first. We will tell you if that applies to you, and on this side of Ferndown it rarely does.
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 single storey bungalow we can reach over from the ground, a chalet bungalow with dormers cut into the slope, and a two storey detached with a conservatory across the back are three different set ups. 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, 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. If the bungalow is going on the market, the roof and the drive are what show in the photographs. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Why these roofs all went green in the same few years
Six in ten homes in Longham went up between the war and the early eighties, and the biggest single group is late sixties and early seventies. That means the concrete interlocking tiles across whole streets here are the same age. A concrete tile leaves the factory with a fine surface layer on it, and over thirty or forty years of rain that layer weathers away.
What is underneath is more open and more porous, so it holds water for longer, and moss and algae key into it instead of sitting on top. That is why a run of houses can all look fine for years and then all go green within a season or two of each other.
Two things follow from it, and both save you money. First, green tiles of that age are not a sign the roof is failing, so nobody should be using the moss to sell you a re-roof. Second, the method matters more on a porous tile than it does on a newer one.
Pressure takes another layer off the surface, leaves it rougher and more absorbent than it was, and the growth comes back faster than before the clean. A scrape and a biocide leaves the tile alone and buys years. If we get up there and find tiles delaminating or nibs snapped off, we will tell you that cleaning is the wrong money and what the roof actually needs.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Longham, Ferndown, West Parley and down along the Stour, and across the BH22 postcodes. 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
Longham questions we get asked
Why is a bungalow a bigger clean than the house next door?
Because you are paying for roof area, not floor area. Bungalows are 36.3% of the dwellings in Longham, and a bungalow puts the same accommodation under roughly twice the roof, with far more ridge, hip and verge for each household. That is more surface to treat and more edge to clear. Height is the one thing in your favour, since most of it is reachable from a pole or a low tower with no scaffold.
The lawn is boggy all winter. Does that affect the paving?
It does. Longham is on naturally wet ground, and paving bedded over it holds damp underneath even when the top looks dry, which is why the green is back on the shaded half of a patio before the sunny half has started. Cleaning deals with what is on the surface. Keeping it off longer means a biocide applied with dry days either side, and keeping soil and leaf litter off the edges.
Every house in the road went up together. Does that show?
On the roofs it does. 60.0% of the stock here was built between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so a whole road was covered within a couple of seasons and the bedding at ridge and verge is reaching the same state together. When we wash a roof of that age we watch the mortar as we go, because a clean will expose a loose ridge tile the moss was propping up.
Can we do the drive on a different visit to the roof?
Yes, and the quote is written so that you can. Each surface goes on its own line, roof, render, gutters, paving, so one can come off without the rest being re-priced. Around Longham the frontages are wide and there is a fair amount of block paving, so the drive is often the largest single item on the sheet. Thomas Hannen prices it after looking, and neither the visit nor the written quote costs anything.
Are there any rules on this side of Ferndown?
Nothing that touches cleaning. No conservation area covers Longham, and there are 13 listed entries against roughly 2700 dwellings, so for practically every house here washing render, tile or paving is maintenance. Dorset Council only becomes involved if you change what a surface is made of, or paint something that was never painted before. Putting a surface back to the colour it already is does not count as a change.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Longham
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Longham
Everything we do in Ferndown Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a price for cleaning in Longham
Tell us what has gone green and we will come and price each surface separately.