Exterior cleaning in Poole
Roof, render, balcony, gutter and paving cleaning across Poole town and BH15, for houses, landlords and blocks of flats alike.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Before you book anything in Poole town, work out whether the surface is actually yours. Around a third of the homes here are flats, and the outside of a flat belongs to the freeholder rather than to you. We will tell you on the visit which parts you can instruct and which have to go through the managing agent.
The town brings us three sorts of call. A house off the High Street where the roof or the render has gone green and the owner wants it looking right. A leaseholder in a block who has looked out at a filthy balcony and a stained wall for two years and cannot get anyone to act. And a landlord or an agent with a date coming, an inspection, a viewing or a change of tenant.
The work itself is straightforward. What is not always straightforward here is who pays and who signs. We are five or six miles away, we come and look at the whole property, and you get a written price for each surface with a plain note of anything we think you cannot authorise on your own.
The work
Quayside blocks, High Street terraces and everything the gulls use
Roofs. The older streets around the town centre run to slate and clay tile, the inter-war housing to plain and interlocking tile, and there are a lot of flat roofs over extensions, bays and the walkways on the blocks. On a pitched roof we scrape the moss out of the laps and off the ridge by hand, clear the valley, and treat the slope with a biocide so the spores left in the surface die back instead of regrowing. We do not pressure wash a roof. The force takes the face off a tile and lifts a slate off its nail, and a jet wash across a flat roof finds every lap in the felt.
Painted render is everywhere in the town, on the blocks and on the pebbledash of the inter-war housing behind them. It cleans with a proper soft wash, low pressure through a wide nozzle and a treatment left to kill the algae and lichen in the surface rather than just push it off the front of it. The old red brickwork on the streets near the quay is a different job again, because the brick is soft and the mortar softer, so we test a panel out of sight and keep the lance well back rather than strip the face off it.
Gull fouling, and why it is not just unpleasant. Close to the water this is half of what we get asked about. Fouling sits on flat roofs, parapets, balconies, walkways and the cills below, and it blocks an outlet faster than leaves do because it sets hard. Left on a painted surface it eats into the coating. It is cleaned down, disinfected and the outlets proved clear afterwards, and we work it around residents rather than through them. Harbour air also leaves a film on glass balustrades and windows that will not wipe off, and hard mains water leaves spotting behind, so glass and frames get purified water. Balcony floors want low pressure and containment, because everything you wash off a fourth floor balcony lands on somebody else's.
On a terrace the gutter runs across several houses and one blocked outlet backs up over all of them. On a block, the rainwater goes into hoppers and internal pipes where nobody sees the failure until a ceiling stains. Clearing the run, flushing each downpipe and photographing anything already rotted is the cheapest job on this page. A third of the homes here are flats, so a lot of the work is the ground around them: block paving on a driveway or a communal car park comes up under controlled pressure and then wants a re-sand, because the wash takes the jointing sand out with the black spot and the weed. Bin stores, undercrofts and the paths between blocks are steam and low pressure work rather than brute force. On a patio we will give you a straight answer about whether a seal is worth the money or will simply lock the damp underneath it.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One team from first visit to 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. If something turns up that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on. Cleaning needs nobody's permission. Two things around it can. Poole town centre has its own conservation area, and a change of appearance there, painting brickwork that has never been painted or coating render, is a planning question rather than a decorating one: for those boundaries the council keeps the list. In a block, the freeholder's consent comes first, which is worth settling before we book a day.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre: the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. A third floor flat reached only through a communal door, a terraced house off the High Street with no side access, and a harbourside block with a car park under it 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. It is not emergency work, but it often has a date on it: a sale or a letting inspection. Poole is the closest patch to us so we can usually get there quickly, but a block with a managing agent takes longer to say yes than the work takes to do, so start that conversation early. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
In a flat, the outside is not yours to clean
Around a third of the homes in Poole are flats or maisonettes, and in the town centre itself the proportion is far higher than that. If you are a leaseholder, the roof, the outside walls, the gutters, the walkways and usually the window frames are retained by the freeholder. They are maintained out of the service charge you already pay, and you cannot instruct a contractor to work on them however much they need doing.
This catches people out constantly. Somebody rings, gets a fair price for cleaning the render on their elevation, and then finds the managing agent will not let anyone on site. Check your lease, or ask the agent what is demised to you, before you spend an afternoon getting quotes.
There is also a rule that works in your favour. Where a landlord is carrying out works that will cost any one leaseholder more than £250, section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requires them to consult the leaseholders first, and a proper external clean across a block will often pass that. That means you can ask to see the estimates, and you can put a contractor forward to be asked for one.
So the practical route for a leaseholder is not to book us, it is to get the block's clean onto the agent's list and ask that we are invited to price it. We are happy to quote to a freeholder, a management company or a residents association, and we will price the communal work and any individual balcony or patio separately so everybody can see what belongs to whom. If you own a house here, none of this applies and you can simply book it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We are based a few miles away and cover Poole town, the quay, Broadstone, Upton and the rest of BH15. 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
Poole questions we get asked
Do you work for freeholders and managing agents?
Regularly, and in Poole town it is the normal route in. A third of the dwellings here are flats, 33.3% of them, so the caller is often a leaseholder who cannot instruct work on a roof or an elevation they do not own. We quote to the freeholder or the agent, break the surfaces out separately and give the consultation with leaseholders something solid to work from.
We are in the Town Centre Heritage area. Any restrictions?
Cleaning is not controlled, appearance is. The Town Centre Heritage conservation area covers much of the older street pattern in Poole, and what it bites on is change: a different render colour, a coating, a covering swapped for something that does not match. Washing a building back to what it already was sits on the upkeep side of that line. Painting it afterwards goes to the council first.
Can you clean up after the gulls?
We do a fair amount of it. Gull mess sets hard on render and on flat roof coverings and it will not shift with a rinse once it has baked on. It is softened, lifted, then treated, because the staining underneath is biological and will darken again if it is only washed off. Nesting season limits when we can work close to a roost, not what we clean it with.
Our 1930s house has a black band low on the render. Why?
It is damp holding at the foot of the wall. Inter war houses make up 19.1% of Poole with the 1930s the largest single slice at 13.5%, and they sit on ground that is naturally wet here, with solid or very early cavity walls. Splash off a hard path and water tracking up the brickwork keep that bottom band dark. Cleaning takes it off, and it returns unless the ground is dealt with.
Where does the water go if the yard drains to the road?
Into the surface water system, which is exactly why we do not let it carry anything it should not. In the town the yards and forecourts run to a gully rather than to soil, so the wash is swept toward a foul gully where one exists, and moss and grit are screened out on a mat and bagged. Nothing with product in it goes down an open road gully.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Poole
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Poole
Everything we do in Poole Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get it priced surface by surface
Free site visit across BH15, houses and blocks. We will tell you plainly which parts you can instruct yourself and which need the freeholder.