Exterior cleaning in Milford on Sea
Render, roofs, gutters, paths and patios across Milford on Sea and SO41. 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.
Render and paintwork in Milford on Sea go green again sooner than they do inland, and it is the salt doing it rather than anything wrong with your wall. Salt sitting on a surface pulls moisture out of the air and holds it there between showers, and algae and lichen only need the surface to stay damp.
So the useful job here is a treatment and a fresh water rinse on a sensible interval, not one hard blast a decade. A pressure lance on salt laden render drives the salts deeper and blows the face off it a year or two later.
The calls come from four directions. Somebody on the seaward side has watched the black speckle come back within a year of the last clean. A block of flats needs the communal roof, gutters and walkways doing and nobody is sure who arranges it. A patio or a path has gone green and slippery through winter. Or a property is being let, sold or handed back and everything needs to look right by a fixed date.
We work through it surface by surface. What is growing, what it is growing on, how exposed that elevation is, and whether the paint or the render under it is sound enough to be cleaned at all. The free site visit is a survey of each elevation rather than a glance from the pavement, and it comes back to you as a free written itemised quote with the method written next to each line rather than one figure for the lot.
The work
Cleaning a house that faces the Solent
Render and paint on the exposed elevations. This is the bulk of the work in Milford on Sea. The village sits under a kilometre from the water, and the south and west faces take the weather and the salt: they carry black lichen and a green film of algae while the sheltered side of the same house still looks clean. Green comes off easily. Black spot is rooted into the surface and needs a biocide and several weeks rather than more force. Before anything starts we test the paint, because masonry paint that has gone chalky, and there is plenty of it here, will strip off in sheets under a lance and hand you a redecoration nobody priced for. Sound render gets a soft wash and a rinse in clean water, which takes the salt off rather than leaving it in the surface.
Flats, and who has to instruct it. About a quarter of the homes here are flats and maisonettes, a lot of them in blocks along and behind the front. The outside of a flat, roof, gutters, walkways and communal render alike, almost always belongs to the freeholder and is paid for out of the service charge, so the person who rings us is often not the person who can order the work. We are happy to quote for a managing agent or a residents' company, and where the cost per flat is significant the landlord has to consult leaseholders formally first. Starting that early is what stops a summer job turning into an autumn one.
On the roofs it is slate and clay plain tile on the older villas, concrete interlocking on the newer housing and the bungalows. Moss packs into the channel of the tile and into the lap where one course covers the next, which pushes water sideways under the covering. It is a dry scrape and brush, then a soft wash at low pressure through a wide nozzle with a biocide behind it. Never a jet wash on slate: the force gets under the lap and works at nail heads that are already corroding in this air. While the poles are up we look at the ridge bedding, and at the clips, brackets and nails, because salt eats those from the edge of the roof inwards and a cleaning visit is the cheapest time to spot it.
Anything shaded or close to the front stays damp and turns slippery through winter, which is a safety job rather than a cosmetic one. Block paving comes up with a rotary surface cleaner and is then re-sanded, because the wash lifts the kiln dried sand out of the joints with the weed. Sealing is worth pricing on a modern surface, but not on anything still carrying salt or damp, because you seal the problem in. There are a great many protected trees through the village, so gutters fill with leaf litter as well as roof moss: cleared by hand or vacuum, then every outlet, downpipe and valley run through with water to prove it takes it. Painted timber fascia and bargeboards get a brush rather than a lance, and conservatory roofs, balcony glass and railings are done off the same setup. Planting below is sheeted and watered down before anything is mixed, and every gully is covered.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One team from the first visit to the last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting. The quote is itemised: 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. Cleaning is maintenance and there is nothing to apply for. There is no conservation area over the village, though there are twenty-eight listed entries in and around it, the parish church among them. Painting or rendering a wall is a different question, and the Planning Portal sets out where external wall work needs consent. New Forest District Council is the authority.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre: the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. A seafront flat needs the managing agent's say so before a hose is uncoiled, a bungalow on the estate roads is reach pole work, and a three storey villa on the cliff top wants a tower and a still day. The work at height rules decide which. The surface sets the method, and getting it wrong takes the finish off with the dirt. Comparing quotes, ask what method each surface gets, whether a treatment is included or just 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 a lot of it here has a date on it: a letting changeover, a sale, scaffolding coming down. Tell us the date and we will say honestly whether it can be done properly. Milford on Sea is around half an hour from us, so the earlier you ring the better. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Salt is why it comes back so quickly
The sea is at the end of the road and the weather that matters comes in off the Solent from the south west, which puts salt on every exposed surface in the village whether or not you can see the water from your window. Salt is hygroscopic. It pulls moisture out of damp air and holds it against the surface, so render, masonry paint, timber and paving here stay wet for hours after an inland wall of the same age has dried out.
Algae and lichen do not need much more than that. It is why the seaward elevation of a house here greens over while the sheltered side of the same house still looks clean. Nothing has failed. The conditions are simply better for the thing you are trying to get rid of.
Three practical things follow. First, the rinse matters as much as the treatment on this coast: finishing with clean water takes the salt off the surface as well as the dead growth, and skipping it leaves the wall primed to hold damp again from the day we drive off. Second, do not let anyone put a pressure lance on salted render or old masonry paint. The salts are already sitting in the pores, force drives them deeper, and when they crystallise they push the face of the render off in patches months later, long after the person who cleaned it has been paid.
Third, buy an interval rather than a miracle: ask for a realistic view of when the seaward face will want doing again, and expect that to be sooner than the back of the house. We use products at the strength on the label as the HSE guidance on biocides sets out, and put that view on the quote.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Milford on Sea, Keyhaven and Everton on SO41, out to Lymington, Hordle and New Milton, and New Forest District Council is the planning authority for this address. 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
Milford on Sea questions we get asked
Why does the sea facing wall go green again so much faster?
Because it never fully dries. Milford on Sea is seven hundred metres from the water, and salt left sitting on render pulls moisture out of the air between showers, so that surface stays damp when a wall a mile inland is bone dry. Algae takes hold in that film. Washing removes what is already there, and it is the biocide left behind that decides how long the seaward elevation stays clean.
Who authorises the work if I own a flat here?
The freeholder or the managing agent, in almost every case. Flats are 25.6% of the housing in Milford on Sea, and the outside of a block, walls and roof and gutters alike, is looked after out of the service charge rather than by the individual owner. We will quote to a residents' association or an agent and set the whole block out on one written schedule. A single leaseholder cannot instruct it alone.
Do you rinse off with fresh water afterwards?
On the seaward side, yes. Salt sitting in the joints and on metalwork keeps working on fixings whether the surface looks clean or not, so at Milford on Sea we finish the exposed elevation with a fresh water rinse and let it dry off. Inland walls do not need it. It counts most on gutter brackets, window trims and anything zinc or steel on the south west facing side.
There are old cottages near All Saints. Can those be washed?
They can, with the pressure right down. 11.6% of the housing here predates 1919, and there are twenty eight listed entries in the parish including the Church of All Saints, so soft brick and lime pointing turn up all over the older streets. On that fabric we use a low pressure lance and a biocide instead of a jet. New Forest District Council is the one to ask before any coating goes on.
What should I look at from the garden before ringing you?
Stand at the far end and look at the seaward gable first. Rust streaks running down from a fixing, green banding under the eaves, and gutter joints dripping onto the render are the three things that say the job is more than cosmetic. On the sheltered side look at ground level for splash marks. Bring a photograph of each elevation to the visit and Thomas Hannen can price it properly.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Milford on Sea
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Milford on Sea
Everything we do in Lymington Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a price for cleaning in Milford on Sea
Tell us the address and which elevation has gone green. We come out, look at it and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.