Exterior cleaning in Lyndhurst
Roof cleaning, low pressure washing for brickwork, tile hanging and painted render, plus paving and gutters across Lyndhurst.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Cleaning a building in Lyndhurst is allowed and needs no permission. Changing how it looks is a different thing entirely. So the method here is a soft wash that takes the growth off and leaves the brick, the tile and the paintwork exactly as they were.
Much of Lyndhurst was built before 1919, and it shows in the work. Tall Victorian gables with decorative brickwork and tile hanging that has gone dark. Steep plain tile and slate pitches with moss in every lap. Painted frontages on the main street that have greyed at pavement level.
Cast iron rainwater goods running behind a bay. We come out for a free site visit, go over the building elevation by elevation, and put a written price together with each surface separately. On an old building the honest answer is sometimes that one wall wants doing and the rest does not.
The work
Cleaning older buildings in the village
Roof cleaning covers old and post-war roofs alike. Plain clay tile and natural slate on the older roofs, concrete interlocking on the post-war housing. Steep pitches hold less water but they hold more moss in the laps than people expect, and the growth pushes the tail of the tile up as it thickens.
We work the moss off dry by hand, clear the ridge, the valley and the gutter underneath, then treat the slope with a biocide. Nothing at pressure goes near an old roof: slate delaminates and a soft clay tile loses its face, and either way a roof clean turns into a roofing bill.
Close to four in ten houses in Lyndhurst predate 1919. Victorian brick with banding and decorative courses is the most common wall here, along with hung tile on upper storeys and painted render on the frontages. All of it gets a low pressure soft wash and a treatment, and all of it gets a test patch first on an area nobody looks at. Old brickwork was laid in lime and the joints are softer than the brick on purpose, so a lance empties them. Painted masonry is worse again, because force does not clean paint, it strips it.
Forecourts and paths run to gravel, tarmac, brick and block paving, stone flags and the small walled areas behind shops and flats. Block paving is jet washed and re-sanded, and the joints get filled properly, not left open. Steps and thresholds come first, because a green film on a worn stone step is genuinely dangerous in the wet. We will seal a driveway on request, but not over anything damp and never on old stone.
With the forest trees so close, gutter clearing here is a job of its own, and where the goods are cast iron a slow leak behind a hopper head darkens a wall for years and gets blamed on the wall, not the pipe.
Before anything runs. Planting is watered and sheeted, drains and the gully are covered, and vents, lamps and signage are protected. A biocide is used at the dilution on the label, only on surfaces it is approved for, and it is kept out of the drains. That is what the biocides regime the HSE administers and pollution prevention guidance both come down to. We would talk you out of abrasive cleaning on old brick, out of sealing a solid wall to keep it clean when it needs to breathe, and out of a bright uniform finish on a hundred year old frontage, because that is not what a clean should leave behind.
How it runs
Soft washing roofs and render under the trees
Thomas looks at every surface you want cleaned and at what is growing on it. Under Lyndhurst's trees, roofs and walls rarely dry out, so moss, algae and lichen build up thickly.
On an old slate or plain tile roof the moss comes off by hand and the roof is then treated at low pressure, because a pressure washer would lift the tiles and push water under them. Render is soft washed with a biocide. Paving is the one surface that can take a pressure washer. The quote sets out, surface by surface, the method, protection, access, and what happens to the water and residue.
You have one point of contact throughout. Plants, glass, cars and doors are sheeted, and wash water is kept out of road drains and ditches, following pollution prevention guidance. Scraped moss is bagged, never pushed into the gutters. At the end of each day the ground is rinsed and swept. Spot a cracked tile or a blown patch of render and we show you a photo and price the repair separately.
Lyndhurst sits inside the New Forest National Park, which is its own planning authority, and the parish has thirty one listed entries. Cleaning itself needs no permission from anyone; what is controlled is a change of appearance, such as abrasive cleaning or painting a frontage a new colour. The Authority’s interactive property map will tell you what your own property carries, a conservation area included.
Cost
Growth, height and run off: what a clean costs here
We cannot put a rate on a square metre, because the same patch can take minutes or hours depending on what has grown on it.
Shade and growth. A house under oaks and beeches carries far more moss and algae than one in the open. Thick moss is scraped off and bagged before any biocide is used, and the HSE rules on biocides set what can go on.
Where we can stand. A tall Victorian gable with the road right against it, a shop front that must stay open while we work, and a cottage with a gravel forecourt and room all round do not share one access plan. Reaching the dirt from the ground with a lance takes one set of kit, getting onto a roof slope takes another, and the work at height rules decide which kit it needs.
Rinse or treatment. A rinse looks fine for a while. A biocide keeps growth back much longer. Under trees, where the green returns fastest, the treatment is really what you are paying for, and it needs a dry day either side to take.
Ask the others which method each surface is getting, whether the biocide is in the price or it is just a wash, and where the dirty water goes.
If there is a date
Cleaning to a date: a sale, a letting or scaffold coming down
Exterior cleaning rarely has to happen today, but it is usually tied to a date: a sale, a letting or an inspection. Phone and give us that date, and we will tell you honestly whether it can be done properly in time, because a biocide needs dry weather to work.
If scaffolding is coming down and you want the render cleaned while it is up, give us the day, not the week. A slippery path by a door is worth mentioning first. Cleaning is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. A missed call gets returned as soon as we can.
The one local thing
Where cleaning stops and altering starts
Around thirty entries in and about the village are listed, and the Lyndhurst Conservation Area covers the town centre, so whether your address sits inside it is worth checking with the National Park Authority. That sounds like paperwork and mostly it is not: washing dirt and organic growth off a building is maintenance, and maintenance needs no consent. The line is crossed when the work changes what the building looks like.
Taking an old limewash or a historic paint finish off a wall, sealing a brick or stone face that has never been sealed, or repainting a frontage in a different colour are all changes of appearance rather than cleans, and on a listed building any of them can need consent before you start. The Authority's heritage and conservation guidance sets out how it looks at that.
In practice it means one habit is worth insisting on from whoever you use. Test a small patch somewhere out of sight, wait, and look at it in daylight before the whole elevation is committed. On Victorian brick with coloured banding, the bands and the field brick weather at different rates and clean at different rates, so a wall can come up looking louder than the street expects.
Photograph the elevation before the work as well. It costs nothing, it settles any argument later about what changed, and on an older building it is the difference between a clean nobody notices and one everybody does.
Who you are dealing with
Who cleans roofs and walls around the village
We are 14.9 miles from Lyndhurst, at our base in Boscombe. We clean roofs and walls across the village, Emery Down and Bank, over towards Minstead and Brockenhurst, and throughout SO43, where planning is a matter for the New Forest National Park Authority.
The company doing the work is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen, who owns the firm, looks at every surface and prices the clean himself. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the itemised quote cost you nothing. Before you book a visit in Lyndhurst, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Lyndhurst?
Most repairs in Lyndhurst 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 Lyndhurst |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Lyndhurst. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Lyndhurst Conservation Area and Swan Green Conservation Area. They cover parts of Lyndhurst, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Lyndhurst. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Lyndhurst
The house is Victorian brick. Will washing hurt the pointing?
Washing Victorian brick can hurt the pointing if the pressure is wrong. Much of Lyndhurst predates 1919, a lot of it from before 1900, so the mortar on most of these houses is soft by design and a lance will cut it out of a joint in seconds. Growth on brick like that comes off with a low pressure wash and a biocide left to work.
If a joint is already open, cleaning shows it up, and repointing is the job afterwards.
Lyndhurst is a conservation area. Does that stop a wash?
No, the designation controls appearance, and taking dirt and algae off a surface leaves the appearance as it was meant to be. There are also 31 listed entries in Lyndhurst, the Church of St Michael and All Angels and the Queen's House among them, and if yours is one of those the constraint falls on the method we use rather than on consent. Consent belongs to altering a building, not to cleaning it.
Which side of the house needs doing first?
The east and north walls on most properties in Lyndhurst. The local aspect is east, so those elevations lose the sun early and stay damp into the afternoon, and the growth is always heaviest on them. There is little point washing a south wall that is already clean. We walk round with you, agree which elevations go on the quote, and leave the ones that do not need touching this time.
Do you need a scaffold on a tall village house?
Rarely: few houses in Lyndhurst are bungalows, so nearly everything here is two storeys or more, and a water fed pole reaches gutter level from the ground on most of it. A tower goes up where a roof has to be worked on rather than rinsed. Scaffold belongs to building work, and if a wash is the whole job we would not be putting one up for it.
You want to try a small area first. What for?
Whether the surface holds together, and whether the colour underneath is even. On the older brick and render in Lyndhurst there is often a limewash or a soft paint under the dirt that lifts off along with the algae, and it is better to find that out on a patch behind a downpipe than across the front elevation. The trial also shows how long the biocide needs, which sets the day we come back.
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Tell us which elevation is bothering you and we will come and look at the building.