Exterior cleaning in Milborne St Andrew

Flint, brick and lime mortar want a light touch. The older fabric here is banded flint and brick, some cob, and a good deal of it rendered or limewashed with brick dressings around the openings.

All of it is bedded in lime mortar, which is deliberately softer than the flint or the brick it holds, so the joint takes the damage instead of the face of the stone. It also means a pressure lance finds the joint first, washes it out to a depth you cannot see from the ground, and drives water into a solid wall with no cavity to drain it. So these get brushed dry, then a biocide at low pressure through a soft wash nozzle, then time. Green film is algae and goes quickly. Black spot is lichen, rooted into the surface, and it dies back over weeks, not minutes.

Thatch, which we do not clean. There is thatch in Milborne St Andrew and it grows moss like everything else. Nobody should be washing it. Water goes into the coat rather than off it, the fixings and netting get disturbed, and a soaked thatch rots from the inside. That is a thatcher's job, and often a sign the coat is holding damp for another reason. We will tell you that for nothing. On the newer houses along the hill the covering is concrete interlocking tile, with clay plain tile and slate on the older properties. For roof cleaning the bulk comes off dry with a scrape and a brush, then a soft wash at low pressure and a biocide, working down from the ridge. No jet wash on concrete tile, and none at all on slate. There are mature trees through the village and woodland on the slopes above it, so the gutters fill with leaf litter as well as roof moss and are worth clearing in the same visit.

Cleaning in Milborne St Andrew has no rate per square metre. One patch of wall can be twenty minutes' work and the same size elsewhere can take most of a morning, depending on the surface and how high it is.

Height and reach. A single storey cottage is hand work from the ground. A two storey house needs reach poles and sometimes a tower, and a farm range behind a yard means a long hose run before any water flows. The work at height rules decide which.

What it is made of. Soft brick, lime render, painted render, concrete and natural stone each need their own method. Use the wrong one and the face comes off with the grime, which costs far more to put right than the clean ever did.

Wash or treat. Water alone shifts loose dirt. Lichen, algae and black spot need a treatment left on to work, which is slower and needs a dry spell, but the result lasts far longer.

Water supply and run-off. With no outside tap, water has to be brought in, and if the run-off heads for a garden bed, a pond or a roadside ditch it has to be caught or diverted.

Before you pick a quote, find out which method goes on each surface, whether the growth is being treated or only rinsed, and what happens to the run-off.

We cover Milborne St Andrew and the valley villages on DT11, out to Bere Regis, Puddletown and Blandford Forum, some 20 miles from our base. For this address the planning authority is Dorset Council.

Registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, the firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, and Thomas Hannen, who owns it, looks at every wall, path and roof before he prices it. A verified customer's review on Checkatrade gave us 10 out of 10. The visit is free, as is the written quote. Before you book a visit in Milborne St Andrew, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Milborne St Andrew 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.