Exterior cleaning in Owermoigne
Roof, render, gutter, drive and patio cleaning across Owermoigne and the villages around it. Priced elevation by elevation, so you only clean what needs it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In Owermoigne the elevation that needs cleaning is nearly always the one that faces away from the sun. Those walls and roof planes stay damp through the winter and green over years before the sunny side does, so the sensible job here is often half a property rather than all of it.
The calls are usually one of three. A north-facing roof slope has gone solid green while the other side of the same roof looks almost new. A rendered wall has streaked black under the gutter and nobody can tell whether that is dirt or damp. Or a path and a patio have got genuinely slippery and somebody has already had a near miss on them.
None of it means anything has failed. It means the building spends more of the year wet than it does dry. We come out, look at the whole place rather than the bit you rang about, and tell you which surfaces to spend money on now and which will keep for a couple of years.
The work
Village fabric, farm roofs and long wet paths
Roofs, and no jet wash on any of them. Clay tile, slate and concrete tile all turn up around the village, and on all three the moss goes into the laps and along the ridge first. We work off a tower or a roof ladder, scrape the laps clear by hand, pull the growth out of the valley and off the ridge, then treat the slope with a biocide so the spores die back rather than coming through again in spring. A pressure wash strips the face off a tile, lifts a slate off its peg and washes the mortar out from under a bedded ridge, and you buy a roofer to fix a cosmetic problem. Older render, limewash and painted walls get a genuine soft wash: low pressure through a wide nozzle, a treatment given time, no lance held close. On old brickwork or brick and flint we test a small panel out of sight first, and if the joints are soft we say so instead of washing them out.
Gutters, drives and hard water. Properties here often come with more roof than house: a garage, a store or a barn with a long gutter run nobody has looked at in years. Clearing them and checking each outlet still takes water is the cheapest thing on this page. The ground here is chalk and drains freely, so run off from a drive soaks straight in rather than heading for a surface water drain, which is also why we are careful what is in the water: gullies covered, planting sheeted. Block paving is re-sanded after washing, because the wash takes the jointing sand out with the weed. The mains water on chalk is hard, so glass and frames are done with purified water or they spot as they dry. Thatch is not cleaned by anybody, and we do not put a lance on lead, on solar panels or on a flat roof that has already been patched.
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 needs no consent from anybody. What does change the position is a listed building, and there are thirteen listed entries around the village, the parish church and Moignes Court among them. On those, method is part of the conversation, and anything that alters the appearance afterwards needs listed building consent from Dorset Council first.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre: the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. A cottage tight against the lane, a farm outbuilding with a long roof run and a modern house set back behind a gravel turn are three different jobs before anyone turns a tap on. 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. This is not emergency work, but it often has a date on it: a sale, a letting inspection, scaffolding coming down. Owermoigne is a twenty mile run for us, so we put it in with Crossways, Warmwell and Winfrith and will tell you which day that round falls on rather than guess. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
The shaded slopes here never get a chance to dry
The ground around Owermoigne tilts towards the north and east, and that decides more about your cleaning bill than anything else on this page. A wall or a roof plane on that side of a building gets no direct sun at all between roughly October and March, and very little of it either side of that. Moss, algae and lichen do not need much: they need a surface that stays damp.
Give them one that never dries out and they will colonise it in two or three seasons and hold on. The same house will have a south-west elevation that still looks respectable after ten years and a north-east one that looks neglected after three, and there is nothing wrong with the building at all.
Once you know that, you can stop paying for the wrong thing. We survey each elevation and each roof plane separately and price them separately, because the sensible job here is often the shaded half of the property now and the sunny half in five years. Regrowth runs on the same split, so the shaded side is the part where the biocide has to be right and where a rinse on its own is a waste of your money.
It is also worth thinking about what is keeping the shade there. A hedge grown up tight against a north wall, or a store built against it, takes away the little air movement the wall had. Cutting a gap of a foot or so behind a hedge, or moving what is stacked against a wall, will do more for it over ten years than the second clean will.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Owermoigne, Crossways, Warmwell, Winfrith Newburgh and the villages along that side of DT2. 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
Owermoigne questions we get asked
Can you clean just the side that has gone green?
That is often all that is needed. The local slopes at Owermoigne face north north east, so one pitch and one wall sit out of the sun for most of the year and green over while the opposite side stays presentable. We price the affected elevation on its own line. Where the rest is only lightly marked we say so, rather than talking you into washing the whole building at once.
There are listed buildings by the church. Do they limit us?
Only if yours is one of them. Thirteen entries at Owermoigne are listed, among them the Parish Church of St Michael and Moignes Court, and each of those is an individual designation rather than a blanket rule over the village. There is no conservation area here at all. On a listed building a clean is still upkeep, but a sealer or a coating waits until Dorset Council says it is acceptable.
The garden runs out to open fields. Will the treatment drift?
Not if it is put on properly. A soft wash goes on at low pressure as a wetting rather than a fog, so it lands where it is aimed instead of travelling like a mist. The far elevations get done on a still morning and whatever is planted underneath is covered first. Ground at Owermoigne drains freely, so the little that reaches the soil is diluted and moving down rather than pooling.
Do you come this far west for one house?
We do, and we would rather line it up with something else in the same direction. Owermoigne is twenty miles out from us, so a single gutter clear on its own is a long trip for a short job. Book the visit and Thomas Hannen looks at everything while he is there, then you decide which lines of the quote to take and which to leave for another year.
What tells you a roof needs more than a wash?
Moss growing out of the mortar rather than sitting on top of the tile, ridge tiles that rock under a hand, and daylight showing in a valley. On the shaded north facing pitch here the growth works into the joints and holds water there all winter, which is what lifts bedding in the end. We check those three before quoting a clean, because washing a failing roof only shows the failure up.
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Get the shaded side priced on its own
Free site visit across DT2. Every roof slope and every wall costed separately, in writing, before anybody books a day.