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.
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Exterior cleaning in Owermoigne is nearly always about the elevation 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, not all of it.
The growth here usually shows first on the north slope. 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, not just 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
Roof cleaning, and no jet wash on any of them. Clay tile, slate and concrete tile all turn up around Owermoigne, 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 and do not come 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.
Drives and hard water. Properties here often come with more roof than house, and the long gutter runs on a garage, a store or a barn are worth a gutter clear of their own. The ground here is chalk and drains freely, so run off from a drive soaks straight in instead of 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
Cleaning walls, roofs and paths on a village house
Thomas looks at each surface first, since render, brick, stone, tiles and paving each want their own method. The quote lists the method for each surface, protection, access, and where the waste water and residue end up, each on its own line.
Render and stone get a low pressure wash with a biocide, applied within the HSE rules on biocides, left to work and then rinsed, because high pressure can blow soft stone and old mortar out. Roof tiles are never pressure washed. Paving takes more pressure and is re-sanded afterwards. Plants, windows and cars are covered. Because we are 22 miles out, the water supply and where the run-off goes are agreed at the survey. Loose pointing or cracked render found while cleaning is photographed and priced, never repaired unasked.
Cleaning is maintenance and needs no consent from anybody. The old centre of Owermoigne is a conservation area, so painting or coating a wall there changes how it looks and is worth checking with Dorset Council. On the thirteen listed entries around the village, the parish church and Moignes Court among them, the method is part of the conversation, and anything that alters the appearance afterwards needs listed building consent first.
Cost
Each surface needs its own method and its own price
A clean cannot be priced fairly by the square metre. What the surface is, and what is growing on it, sets the time.
The surface. Green or black growth on render needs a biocide and a few days to work. Old brick and stone want the gentlest method. Paving needs cleaning, then fresh sand brushed into the joints. Use the wrong method and the finish comes off with the dirt.
Access. A cottage hard against the lane, a farm outbuilding with a long roof and a newer house set back behind a gravel turning area sit at very different points on the price. Whether it is done off a pole, a tower or a scaffold comes down to the work at height rules.
Water. With no outside tap, water has to be brought in. Run off carrying biocide must be kept out of ditches and streams, as the government pollution guidance says, so it is collected or controlled.
Treating or rinsing. A plain rinse looks good for a short time. A biocide gets to the roots of the growth, so the surface stays clean for longer.
Put the same questions to anyone else: which method goes on each surface, whether a biocide treatment or only a rinse is priced, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A sale, a letting, or scaffold coming down
Nothing here is an emergency, though there is often a deadline: a sale, a letting inspection, scaffolding about to come down, or a green path someone could slip on. Tell us the date when you ring.
Owermoigne is about 22 miles from our Boscombe base in a straight line, so we arrange a date that suits the route and tell you which day rather than guess. A slippery path can be treated first. Scheduled cleaning runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. With a date looming, a call is quicker to sort than the form, and if we miss it, we call you as soon as we are able.
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
Who comes to clean, and where we work
We cover houses in Owermoigne and Warmwell, over in Crossways and Winfrith Newburgh, and in the villages along that side of DT2, 22 miles from our base in Boscombe, and the council is Dorset. Thomas Hannen owns the business.
He comes out, looks at each surface and what is growing on it, and prices the clean himself. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, which is registered in England and Wales as number 15471719. Our Checkatrade page shows a 10 out of 10 from a verified customer. The visit costs nothing and neither does an itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Owermoigne, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Owermoigne?
Most repairs in Owermoigne 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 Owermoigne |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Owermoigne. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Owermoigne Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Owermoigne. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Owermoigne. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Owermoigne
Can you clean just the side that has gone green?
Cleaning just the green side 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, and we will not talk 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, not a blanket rule over the village. The village does also have its own conservation area over the historic core, which controls changes to how buildings there look, such as a paint or a coating, not a routine clean. 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, not 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 two 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.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Owermoigne
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Free quote
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.