Exterior cleaning in Parkstone

Render, painted walls and pebbledash. Much of Upper Parkstone, along and behind Ashley Road, is terraces and inter-war and post-war semis, a lot of it finished in painted render or pebbledash. Green algae, black spot and grey lichen settle on the north and east faces and under the eaves where the wall never dries.

That is soft wash work: a biocide applied at low pressure through a wide fan nozzle, left to kill the growth and its spores, then rinsed. A jet wash would push the top layer off and drive water into every hairline crack, and on old pebbledash it can lift the stones out of the dash coat. Where the paint is already failing we say so, because cleaning will not bring a flaking finish back and rendering in Parkstone is the other job to price.

Old brickwork. The Victorian and Edwardian houses in Lower Parkstone are mostly red brick, laid in a soft mortar that is often lime. The brick face is the weatherproof skin, and once it is blasted off the brick starts to crumble. So brick gets a low pressure wash and a treatment where there is growth, tried first on a panel out of sight. Any joints that are open or crumbling get pointed out to you, because washing them hard only makes them worse, and repointing comes before a clean in that case.

Drives, paths and patios. Towards Penn Hill the plots get bigger and so do the drives. Block paving is cleaned with a rotary surface cleaner at controlled pressure so the surface is not scoured, weed and moss come out of the joints, and then it is re-sanded, because the wash takes the jointing sand with it. Leave that out and the blocks start to move. A patio in sandstone or porcelain gets its own method, and we tell you plainly whether a seal is worth paying for or would just trap damp under the surface.

Roofs and gutters. Moss on a roof is scraped out of the laps and off the ridge by hand and the slope treated so it dies back, with the ridge and hips checked while we are up there. Slate and old clay tile are never pressure washed. The roof cleaning page covers that in full. Moss off a roof ends up in the gutter, so clearing the valleys, outlets and downpipes belongs as part of the same visit, which is set out on the gutter cleaning in Parkstone page.

Protecting the garden and the harbour. Planting under the walls is soaked with plain water first and sheeted where the treatment could drift onto it, and every biocide is used at the dilution on its label, under the rules the HSE administers. Parkstone runs downhill to the harbour, and a road gully carries surface water, not sewage, so nothing with product in it is washed into one. That follows the pollution prevention guidance, and on a sloping drive it means catching the run off at the bottom instead of letting it find the road.

How long it takes. A semi with render front and back and a drive is usually a day. A larger detached house with a patio and paths can run to two. Heavy, long established growth sometimes needs a second visit so the biocide can finish working, rather than more pressure.

When we would talk you out of it. If the render is cracked and the growth is following the cracks, a clean on its own buys a few months. If the drive has sunk, cleaning shows the dips off more clearly. In both cases we tell you before you pay for a clean.

No rate per square metre, because the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two, depending what is growing on it.

Getting to it. A Victorian villa near the station with a shallow front garden, an Upper Parkstone terrace that fronts the pavement, and a detached house off Penn Hill Avenue with a long block paved drive are three different set ups. Ground level off a lance is one thing, a second storey or a roof slope is another. Reach poles do a lot of it, some of it wants a tower, and the work at height rules decide which.

The surface decides the method. Render, painted masonry, old brick, block paving and a tiled roof all want different pressure, and some want no pressure at all. Getting that wrong takes the surface off with the dirt, which is the expensive kind of clean.

How bad it has actually got. A light film comes off quickly. Years of organic growth needs treating, and often needs a second visit rather than more pressure.

Comparing quotes? Ask what method is being used on each surface, whether any treatment is included or just a rinse, whether a second visit is part of it, and where the run off is going. What is left off a quote matters as much as what is on it.

We cover the whole of Parkstone, from Ashley Road and Heatherlands on the higher ground down through Ashley Cross to Penn Hill and Whitecliff, across BH12 and BH14, with BCP Council as the local authority. Our Boscombe base is 4.6 miles away.

You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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. Before you book a visit in Parkstone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Parkstone 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.