Exterior cleaning in Matchams
Roofs, cladding, render, gutters, drives and patios around Matchams and BH24. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Exterior cleaning at Matchams is almost never about whether a surface can be cleaned. It is how soon it goes green again. Buildings here sit in among conifer plantation and heath, and a surface that gets no direct sun stays damp most of the year. So the honest answer is that a rinse on its own is money wasted here, and a soft wash with a proper biocide treatment is the part that buys you time.
Matchams properties need cleaning for a handful of reasons. A roof has gone dark and mossy on the shaded pitch. Gutters are overflowing and there is a stripe down the wall where they have been running over. A drive or a hardstanding has turned green and slippery through winter. Timber cladding or render on a chalet has gone black on one side and looks nothing like the other. Or somebody is putting a property up for sale and wants it looking cared for by a set date.
What we do about it starts with a survey of the surface, not just a look at the dirt. A concrete tile, a piece of painted timber, a rendered gable and a block paved drive all want different pressure, and two of them want almost none. Then we tell you what the growth actually is, whether it needs treating or only washing, and roughly how long it should stay off on your plot. That comes back to you as a written itemised price after a free site visit.
The work
The cleaning that matters out here
Roof cleaning, and knowing when not to. Moss sits in the channel of the tile and packs into the lap where one course overlaps the next, and packed laps push water sideways instead of down the slope. That is the reason to clear it, not the look.
It comes off dry with a scrape and a brush, then a biocide goes on through a soft wash nozzle at low pressure. We do not jet wash a tiled roof. The force takes the cement fines off a concrete tile and leaves it porous, so the regrowth is faster, and it lifts mortar bedded ridge tiles that were only just holding on.
There is a lot of timber out here, on chalets, park homes and the workshops behind the houses, and cladding is the surface people most often ruin with a pressure washer. A lance raises the grain, forces water behind the boards and blows the sealant out of the panel seams on a park home. All of it gets a soft wash, a brush where the growth is heavy and a rinse at garden hose pressure. On the shaded side of a house in Matchams, a wall that sees no sun greens over while the sunny side of the same house stays clean. Green is algae and comes off. Black spot is lichen, rooted in, and it needs treatment and a few weeks.
Gutters, drives and where the water goes. Conifers shed needles all year, and the matted litter holds water against the fascia, so gutter clearing is best booked with the roof. Parking out in Matchams is often gravel or tarmac, not block paving: tarmac wants a wide fan and a light touch or it goes patchy. Before anything starts, planting is sheeted and watered down and every gully is covered.
How it runs
Cleaning walls, roofs and drives under the trees
Thomas walks round with you and looks at every surface on the list: roof, walls, paths, the drive, an outbuilding or two. Each gets its own method and price on the quote, along with how plants and glass are protected, how we reach it, and where the dirty water ends up. The clean then runs surface by surface. If a wash reveals cracked render or open joints, you will see them in a photo alongside a separate price.
Where a plot is surrounded by trees, shaded walls go green, roofs gather moss and needles, and drives grow algae. We scrape moss off by hand and apply a biocide. Blasting damages the tiles. Render gets a soft wash, block paving a rotary clean and fresh sand in the joints. We keep run-off out of ditches and drains, in line with pollution prevention guidance, and cover plants before we start.
There is no permission needed to wash a building, and at Matchams no listing or conservation area sits behind the work either. It is only if you then paint or render a wall that the Planning Portal sets out when permission applies. Dorset Council is the authority.
Cost
Shade, moss and the method for each surface
Square metres do not set the price. How it is reached and what is growing on it set the time. Height and ground. A single storey wall is reach-pole work. Anything taller needs a tower on level, firm ground, which a sloping or soft garden makes slower to set up. The work at height rules say which kit is used.
The surface. Concrete tiles, clay tiles, render, brick, timber cladding and paving each take their own method and pressure. The wrong one takes the surface off with the dirt, or drives water behind it.
Shade. Walls and roofs under trees grow green again faster. A biocide that kills the roots, used under HSE's biocides regime, holds it back for far longer than a rinse, and it needs a dry spell to work.
Outbuildings. A garage, a workshop or a stable roof is priced as its own item, because the access and the surface are often different from the house.
Needles and debris. Roofs under pines collect needles in the valleys and behind the chimney, and those come out by hand before any wash.
Ask any competing quote what method each surface gets, whether a biocide is included or only a wash, and where the dirty water goes.
If there is a date
Cleaning to a deadline
No one needs an emergency wash, but plenty of these jobs come with a deadline: the house going on the market, a new tenant, a party in the garden. Give us the date and we will say honestly whether it can be done properly by then, and whether the weather will let a biocide take.
If the date is close, ring us. We are only five and a half miles away, so coming to look first is easy. Booked cleaning runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Cannot get through? Wait for our call, which comes as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Under the pines, and what that costs you
The thing that decides how often a building here needs cleaning is not the building. It is the shade. Matchams sits in among conifer plantation and open heath, so a great many roofs and gables here get little direct sun on them through the winter half of the year. A surface that never dries out is a surface that stays colonised.
Moss holds water in the tile channel, algae films over render within weeks of being rinsed, and lichen gets its roots into anything with an open texture. On top of that, conifers shed needles, resin and small debris all year round, not in one tidy autumn, so the gutters, valleys and flat roof outlets here fill up two or three times as fast as they do on an open plot a mile away.
The buying advice here is worth money to you. First, do not buy a rinse. Water alone takes off the green you can see and leaves the spores in the surface, and under trees that grows back within a season. Pay for the biocide treatment instead and let it work, and ask for any second visit to be written on the quote rather than assumed. Second, put the gutters on a shorter cycle than the standard advice: once in late autumn is not enough where the litter never stops falling, so late autumn and again in spring is the sensible pattern.
Cutting back the limbs that actually overhang the roof does more for the problem than any product, and we will say so. Where run off has to go somewhere, the ground here is free draining sand next to protected heath, so gullies and drains get covered and planting is sheeted and watered down first. That is ordinary practice under the HSE guidance on biocides, not an extra.
Who you are dealing with
Who washes the outside of your property
Thomas Hannen runs the business and comes out to price the clean himself. From our base in Boscombe we reach Matchams in about five and a half miles, and we also work on Hurn Forest and the lanes towards St Leonards and Avon on BH24, out to Ringwood, Ashley Heath and West Parley.
Dorset Council is the planning authority. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Checkatrade shows a verified 10 out of 10 from one customer. The visit and written quote are both free, and itemised. Before you book a visit in Matchams, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Matchams?
Most repairs in Matchams 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 Matchams |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Matchams. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Matchams, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Nothing in Matchams is on the statutory list, so listed building consent does not come into it. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Matchams. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Matchams
The back of the roof never dries out. Why only that side?
Because that slope faces away from the sun, and under the pines here a shaded pitch can go without direct sun from one month to the next. Moss needs damp more than it needs anything else, so it establishes on the shaded pitch well before the open side shows a green tinge. That is why we treat one elevation heavily and give the sunny pitch a lighter pass rather than doing both the same.
Is there any conservation area or listed status to worry about?
None for a clean: there is no conservation area over Matchams, and washing and treating the outside of a building counts as maintenance, not development, so nothing needs an application. If you are unsure whether your own building is listed, check the Historic England list for your address. On an unlisted house the colour and finish of whatever you replace afterwards, a fascia or a soffit, is your choice and not something Dorset planners will comment on.
Can you clean a timber chalet or a park home?
We can, and it is a different job to a brick house. Timber and plastic panels score and dent under a lance, so it is a soft wash by hand and a rinse. Roof sheets on a chalet are thin and standing on them is out, so the covering is done off a tower or a pole. Small bore guttering on a park home blocks with pine litter far faster than a house gutter does.
Everything soaks straight into the sand here. Is that a problem?
It is only a problem for what goes into it. The ground at Matchams is freely draining sand, so wash water disappears within a few feet of where it lands instead of finding a gully. Fine for a rinse, not fine for concentrated product, so we mix to the label, keep it off the planting and never tip a surplus onto open ground. The heath beside you sits on the same sand.
The wind here comes off open ground. Does that matter?
It matters for when we work rather than whether we can. Wet weather here mostly comes in on a south westerly, so driven rain lands on whichever wall faces that way and keeps it wet, while a shaded pitch stays damp for its own reasons. Spraying a treatment into a gusting south westerly wastes most of it and puts the rest where nobody wants it, so that wall gets done on a still morning.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Matchams
Nearby places we also cover for exterior cleaning, with straight-line distances from Matchams, and the other trades we offer in Matchams itself.
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Get a price for cleaning in Matchams
Tell us the address and what has gone green. We come out, look at the surface and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.