Exterior cleaning in New Milton
Roof, render, conservatory, gutter, drive and patio cleaning across New Milton and BH25. Treated properly so it stays clean, not blasted so it looks clean.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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On New Milton roofs the black staining is algae sitting in the surface of a concrete tile, and it comes off with a soft wash treatment, not pressure. We scrape the moss out by hand, treat the rest, and leave the tile intact. Nothing about the roof has failed just because it looks like this.
A New Milton clean usually begins with a sale, a roof gone black or a gutter running over. Someone has had an offer accepted and wants the front of the house looking right for the survey and the photographs. Someone has watched the roof go from patchy to solid black over about four winters. Or the gutters are running over onto the path and it has started to green up underneath.
None of that is a repair. All of it is maintenance that has been left a bit long, which is normal. We come out, look at every surface you are thinking about, and price them one at a time so you can do the roof now and the drive in the spring if that suits you better.
The work
Estate roofs, conservatories and the things that go green first
Concrete tile roofs. Most of the housing here went up between the 1950s and the end of the 1980s, and what came with it was concrete interlocking tile. Concrete holds damp in its face in a way clay does not, so algae takes hold early and moss follows into the laps and along the ridge.
We work off a roof ladder or a tower, scrape the laps and the ridge clear by hand, pull the growth out of the valley, and treat the whole slope with a biocide. What we will not do is jet wash it. The force takes the sand and cement face off an interlocking tile along with the colour, and a stripped tile stays porous for the rest of its life to look clean for one summer. The town sits under two miles from the water, and salt in the air keeps a surface damp between showers, so the treatment matters more here than the wash does.
The estates around New Milton are mostly painted render or masonry paint over block with brick to the ground floor. Painted surfaces want a genuine soft wash at low pressure with the treatment doing the work, because a lance held close drives water behind the paint film and lifts it in sheets six months later. Bare brickwork is cleaned gently, and if the pointing is soft we say so before we start. A lot of these houses had a conservatory added, and its roof shows dirt fastest and gets cleaned least. Glass and polycarbonate both come up well, but the part that matters is the box gutter where the conservatory meets the house, because when that silts up the overflow goes straight into the wall and nobody sees it happen. We clear it as part of the job.
Gutters, drives and communal areas. A quarter of the homes in New Milton are terraced, with one continuous gutter run over several houses, so gutter clearing is worth doing along the whole run before the fascias and render below are washed. Block paving is the standard drive here: it comes up under controlled pressure and then wants a re-sand, because washing the black spot and the weed out takes the jointing sand with it. Another quarter of the homes in the town are flats, and the work there is usually the bin store, the walkways, the car park and the paths rather than the roof. That is quiet work that has to be done without shutting the access, and we plan it so.
How it runs
Cleaning a New Milton roof, render or drive
Thomas walks round with you, looks at the roof, walls and paving, and puts a price on each himself. You deal with one company for the cleaning. In the written quote each surface gets its own line: the method for each surface, protection, access, any biocide treatment, and where the water and residue go.
In town the jobs are moss on concrete tiled roofs, green algae on render and pebbledash on the shaded side, and block paving on drives. This close to the sea, salt and damp keep surfaces wet, so algae comes back quickly. We use a soft wash with a biocide on render and roofs, because a high-pressure jet damages them, and we protect plants, windows and cars. Broken tiles or blown render spotted while we clean are photographed and priced separately, never just added to the bill.
Cleaning is maintenance, so nobody needs to give permission for it. Cutting back the tree that causes the shade may need consent if it has a preservation order, and painting a wall that has never been painted can need permission, particularly in the Old Milton Green conservation area. New Forest District Council is the authority, and the Planning Portal lists other permissions you may need.
Cost
Surface, height and treatment: what a clean costs
The surface sets the method. Concrete tiles, render, pebbledash, block paving and painted masonry each need a different method. Getting it wrong takes the finish off with the dirt.
Height. A flat above a shop in the town centre, a detached house with a conservatory across the back, and a bungalow you can walk a reach pole round are different jobs before a tap is turned on. The work at height rules decide which platform.
Treatment. A biocide that keeps algae off for longer is used under the biocides regime the HSE administers. It costs more than a rinse, and it lasts far longer on a seaward wall.
Run off. Water and residue must not go into the surface water drains, which run to streams and the sea, so we collect it or direct it onto soft ground.
How far it has got. A thin green film on render comes off with one treatment. Thick moss on a north facing roof slope, or black lichen rooted into the tile, needs scraping first and a follow-up treatment, which is more time on the roof.
When comparing, ask what method each surface gets, whether a biocide treatment is included or just a rinse, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A viewing, a letting check or a deadline
A clean in New Milton is rarely an emergency, but it often has a date on it: a sale, a letting inspection, or a scaffold coming down after other work. Ring, so we can look at the diary with you. Slippery algae on a path or steps is a safety issue and goes first.
Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If the date is close, a phone call is quicker than the form, and if you miss us we call back as soon as we can.
The one local thing
The trees are protected, so the cleaning is the answer
New Milton has far more mature tree cover than a town this size normally does, and a great deal of it is covered by tree preservation orders. That matters to you the moment you work out why one elevation of your house is green and the other is not.
The usual fix people reach for is to take the overhanging limb off, get the light and the air moving, and let the wall dry out on its own. Here you often cannot simply do that. Work on a protected tree needs written consent from the council first, and that takes weeks even when the answer is yes. Cutting first and asking afterwards is an offence, not a telling off.
So on a shaded elevation under a protected tree, cleaning stops being a one off and becomes the maintenance that replaces the pruning you are not allowed to do. Practically, that alters what is worth paying for. First, the treatment matters more than the wash: killing the spores in the surface buys you years, where a rinse buys you a season.
Second, the gutters under those trees want doing more than once a year, because leaf litter and needles will fill an outlet in one autumn and the overflow will undo everything you paid for on the wall below. If you tell us which trees are yours and which are protected, we will build the visit around that rather than quoting you for a clean that will not last.
Who you are dealing with
Who cleans your house and drive
Eight miles of coast road separate New Milton from our base in Boscombe. We clean in the town, Barton on Sea, Bashley and the BH25 villages either side, and the authority for all of it is New Forest District Council.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719. The owner, Thomas Hannen, looks at each surface and prices the clean himself. There is a verified 10 out of 10 from one of our customers on Checkatrade. Both the visit and the itemised quote in writing are free. Before you book a visit in New Milton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in New Milton?
Most repairs in New Milton 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 New Milton |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for New Milton. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Old Milton Green Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around New Milton. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers New Milton. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in New Milton
Is a 1980s house too new to need this doing?
A 1980s house is not too new for it. A third of New Milton went up between 1983 and 2008, with the 1980s alone accounting for 19.9%, and those houses came with dry verges, plastic gutters and interlocking concrete tiles. Concrete holds moss better than clay once the surface has weathered, so a forty year old estate roof often looks worse than a Victorian slate. It is a cleaning job, not a repair, which is the good news.
We are mid terrace. Can you clean just our front?
We can, though it will stand out. Terraces are 25.4% of the stock in New Milton, and where the fronts run on in one line a single clean elevation between two green ones is obvious from the road, while growth next door reseeds across the join. If the neighbours want theirs doing it goes on one visit and one schedule, and the shared gutter is best cleared end to end at the same time.
We are nearly two miles inland. Does salt still reach us?
It does. New Milton sits 2.8km back from the water and a south westerly carries salt that far without difficulty, which is why gutter brackets and nail heads on the exposed side corrode before anything else. It is milder than on a house sitting right on the shore, and it still shortens the life of every metal fixing on that elevation. That is the wall we do first and check the brackets on.
Can you get it done before a viewing?
Usually, if there is a week or two in it. What lifts a photograph most is the front elevation, the drive and the gutter line, in that order, so where time is short we do those and leave the back for later. On the newer estates in New Milton it is the block paving that dates a house, because the sand washes out and weeds follow. Cleaned and re sanded, it reads as maintained.
What is on the written quote if I only want the roof?
The roof and nothing else, priced as its own line. A quote at New Milton gets split by elevation and by surface, so covering, render, gutters, soffits, drive and patio each stand alone and you take the ones you want. Thomas Hannen writes it after the visit rather than over the phone, because a photograph will not show whether a ridge is loose. Neither the visit nor the written quote costs anything.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near New Milton
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Exterior cleaning guides
Soft washing vs pressure washing: safe for a roof? How to clean a patio without damaging it Moss on a roof: does it need removing?Builders in New Milton: all our building work Everything we do in New Milton Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get every surface priced separately
Free site visit across BH25. Take the roof now and the drive later if that suits you, and you will still have the price for both in writing.